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LIBRA^v or nONriRFSS. 



^ j'^^Uqt^rir^Wl^o. 



I. -liD STATES OF AMERICA. 



ASK YOUR niOTESTANT, YOUR CAMPBELLITE AxVD 

HARD-SHELL NEIGHBOR OR FRIEND TO READ THIS BOOK, AND 

LET YOUR CHILDREN READ IT. 



OR, 

DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 

PROTESTANTS CAN NOT ANSWER THIS QUESTION : 

"ABE THE BAPTim OF THE EOMISH CHURCH VALID?" 



CATHOLICS, FREE-WILT. BAPTISTS, 

CAMPBELLITES, ANJ> ANTI-MISSIONARY BAPTISTS 

CAN NOT ANSWER THIS: 

"ABE THE BAPnSMS OF BAPTIST CHDRCHES VALID?" 



By J. R. GRAVES, LL.D., 

Editor of ''T'unessee Baptist,'' Author of*^Great Iron Wheel," *'Bible 

Doctrine of the Mid/Ve Life,''' ^^ Seven Dispensations ^'^ 

^^Old Landniarkism—What is It?" 



"The Baptiom of John, was it from heaven or of men ? Answer me. And they rei- 
snned w'nh themselves, sayine:: If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then 
dill ye not believe him ? Rut if we shall say, Of men ; they feared the people. # * * 
And they answered and said unto Jesus, We can not tell." — Makk 11 : 30-33. 



MEMPHIS, 
BAPTIST BO 

GRAVES, MAHA 
l88 




nr 









Copyright, i88i, hy J. R. Graves, 
Memphis, Tenn. 



PREFACE-TO SECOND EDITION ENLARaED. 



Tri-lemma ! Tri-lemma ! What does the word mean, and 
of what does the book treat ? 

When one is pinned between two perils we say he is in a 
dilemma— i. e., between two horns. When he is pinned be- 
tween two, and pierced by a third, may we not say he is in a 
JVi'-lemma ? 

It will be remembered that when the Pharisees upon one 
occasion demanded of Christ his authority for what he did in 
cleansing the temple of money changers and thieves, He re- 
plied : "I will also ask ot you one question: The baptism 
of John, was it from heaven [i. e., valid], or of men ? [invalid] 
answer me. And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If 
we shall say. From heaven ; he will say. Why then did ye not 
believe him? But if we shall say, Of men; th.ey feared the 
people. . . . And they answered and said unto Jesus, We can 
NOT TELL."— Mark xi. 29-33. These Pharisees and deceivers of 
the multitudes were evidently in a tri-lemma, for they were 
self-condemned when they said they could not tell. Had 
they decided according to the evidences before their eyes, 
they could have answered Jesus correctly, but they were in- 
fluenced by other motives than a desire to be governed by the 
truth. This circumstance suggested the title of this little 
booi^; for Protestants, wlien asked if Catholic baptisms are 
valid, *' reason among themselves," and when they see that 
they nre unbaptized and unchurched, answer it as they may, 
they answer: "We can not tell," when they know and can 
tell, if they would but admit the plain truth. 

Afier twenty years I have been able to finish and re-issue 
this little volume. It was hastily prepared and put before the 
])ublic when the action of the Presbyterian Assembly touch- 
ing Romish baptisms was awakening inquiry. The Assembly 
had suppressed the discussions, and thousands were anxious 
to learn all that could be known of what had transpired upon 
its floor, and the positions their leaders had taken p?'o and con. 
Tills book was the only source of information attainable by 
the people of the transactions of the Old and New School 
Presbyterian Assemblies in America, and it is to-day. Its 
object was to widely extend and deepen the interest of the 
Protestant laity in this question of Romish baptisms, since 
their grave and reverent Doctors had declared and demon- 
strated the fact that Whether valid, or invalid, all Protestant 
ministers were unbaptized, and unordained, and without au- 
thority to preach, and the entire laity were also unbaptized 
and unchurched! I have had the pleasing evidence from 
all parts of the continent, even from distant Oregon, that the 
little Book has done " yeoman service " in leading Protestest- 
ants to seek a baptism that was not derived from " The Man 
of .Sin," and church relationships in churches that never 
symbolized with the Papacy. 

I have now enlarged the work, and again send it out upon a 
more extended mission. Catholics rejoiced over the dismay 
it carried into the ranks of Protestants, as did Free- Will Bap- 
tists, Campbellites, and Anti-Missionary Baptists, but what 
will they now say when as destructive a question is brought 
home to them, viz.: The baptisms of the Baptists— are they 
from heaven [valid], or of men— [invalid] ? Answer as they 
may, they will inevitably find themselves unbaptized and 
unchurched. J. R. GRAVES. 

Arcadia, near Memphis, January, 1881. (iiij 



INTRODUCTION, 



^•^^RI-LEMMA ! Tri-lemma! It is not in 
aH5^ the Dictionaries. Pray, what is a tri- 
{y^JvD lemma? asks the Reader, 



When one is pinned between two diffi- 
culties, we say he is in a Di-lemma. 

When he is pinned between two difficulties, 
and pierced through by a third, may we not 
say he is in a 

TRI-LEMMA? 

Read and decide if Protestantism is not in 
just such a situation. 

J- R. G. 

Nashville, Jan. 1, 18G0, 

(V) 



CONTENTS. 



CHArTER I. 

THE QUESTION DISCUSSED. 

PA«I 

Its importance to all Protestant sects — The difficulties it 
J resents — The attention given to it by the 0. S. and N. S. 
I resbyterian Assemblies^ 9 

CHAPTER II. 

THE POSITION OF THE 0. S. PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY. 

Its answer fatal to the Ecclesiastical claims of Presby- 
terians and all Protestants, 15 

CHAPTER III. 

POSITION OP THE N. S. PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY, 1854. 

The question submitted to a Committee — A Majority and 
Minority Report — The Assembly divided — It is found 
that to decide Romish baptisms valid or invalid waa 
equally fatal to the baptisms of all Protestants — Decided 
that it could not expediently be decided — The Tri- 

lemma, , 52 

(vii) 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

r'IIAl>TEH IV. 

TWO OTHER QUESTIONS. 

PAOE 

1. Can Protestants oppose the Papacy \vitlioiit being 
slain by the Papacy?— 2. (an Ba})tists oppose the 
Pajjacy without destroying Protestantism? 89 

CHAPTER y. 

THE ECCLESIASTICAL CLAIMS OF BAPTISTS. 

Did Baptists originate in tlie bosom of the Papal 
Church, or receive their baptisms and ordinations 
from the Man of Sin? 119 



CIIAPTER I. 

TiTE Repeated Discussions of the 0. S. Presby- 
terians 159 

CHAPTER 11. 

The Action of the Cumberland Presbyterian As- 
sembly 163 

CHAPTER III. 
The Tri-lemma in which the Catholics are Involved 181 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Tri-lemma of the Free- Will Baptists 187 

CHAPTER V. 
The Tri-lemma of the Campbellites 190 

CHAPTER YI. 
Tiie Tri-lemma of the ANTi-IVfissiONARV Baptists...... 198 



IK ^i^ei« if mm 



♦ 



OR, 

DEATH BY THREE HOliNS. 
CHAPTER I. 

THE QUESTION UNDER CONSIDERATION. 

Its Importance to all Protestant Sects — The Difficulties it 
presents — The Attention given it by the Old School and 
New School Presbyterian Assemblies, 

/WP^QE question that has presented itself to 
J»j|S) Protestants as embarrassed with more 
difficulties than any other, and the solu- 
tion of which they have discovered must 
prove fatal to their ecclesiastical claims 
in the eyes of the world, whether answered affir- 
matively or negatively, is this: 

Is Baptism in the Church of Rome Valid ? 

From what has appeared, it is evident that 
there is a growing uneasiness felt by the more 




10 THE tui-leMxMa; or, 

intelligent and thinking Pedobaptist ministers, 
generally, and by Presbyterians, ministers and 
members, especially. 

That Presbyterians, more than the other Prot- 
estant societies, are more disturbed by this 
.question, is owing to the fact that it has been 
up and discussed at length in the General As- 
semblies of both the Old and New School divi- 
sions of the Presbyterian family. The positions 
taken by their leading doctors of divinity, and 
the utterances they gave during the discussions 
that arose, so far as they have been heard, have 
startled and alarmed their people ! So con- 
vinced were the leaders that a knowledge of the 
discussions, and of the diflSculties surrounding: 
the question, by their people, would be produc- 
tive of great disquiet, if not of more serious 
consequences, that they have, as much as possi- 
ble, kept them in ignorance, and discouraged dis- 
cussion in their denominational papers. 

But this is one of those questions that can not 
be suffocated. Inquiry once started can not be 
stifled down. If the people are allowed to hear 
but little, and not allowed to talk or to write 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 11 

about it, yet they can think; and they will thmk 
more and more about it. Thus will investiga- 
tion go forward, producing conviction, until the 
masses are permeated, and when they do act — 
when they do call their leaders to an account — 
it will be a fearful reckoning. The volcanic fires, 
though long restrained by the superincumbent 
pressure, yet burn silently, constantly gathering 
strength and force, until they burst through 
their rocky barriers to the surface, and pour 
their irresistible fiery currents of destruction 
over the land. 

The time, we think, has fully come when not 
only Christian Protestants should meet this ques- 
tion fairly and fully, but all men should under- 
stand its bearings. Men of no ecclesiastical con- 
nections are called upon to support, and they all 
are supporting, some one of the religious denom- 
inations by their means and influence, and they 
have a right to understand the question. 

It is the spirit of the Papacy, whose power is 
the power of darkness, to repress free thought, 
and the liberty of speech and the press. It is a 
confession of a consciousness of wrong, on the 



12 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

part of the leaders of the people or the officers 
of any government, civil or ecclesiastical, to seek 
protection by pursuing such a course. 

The writer's design in this little work is to sub- 
mit to the reading world all the facts, admissions 
and conclusions, etc., etc., connected with the 
discussion of this question by the Presbyterian 
General Assemblies, that its grave importance, 
and the fatal difficulties with which it is invested 
to all Protestants,^ may be clearly understood, 
and that candid men may act in accordance with 
their convictions from the facts. 

There are several axioms that should be borne 
in mind by the reader throughout this discus- 
eion. They are held in common by all parties, 

1. That no organization but a true 
Church of Christ, visible, can administer 
Scriptural Baptism, 

2. CONVERSELY, IF THE BAPTISM 
IS CONSIDERED SCRIPTURAL AND 

♦ Baptists are not Protestants. " They are the only 
people that never symbolized with the Papacy." — Sir I 
Newton, (See Tract, Price 10 Cents.) 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 13 

VALID, THE SOCIETY ADMINISTERING 
IT MUST BE ACKNOWLEDGED AND 
TREATED AS A TRUE CHURCH OF 
CHRIST, VISIBLE. 

Now, all can see if the baptisms of the Church 
of Rome are pronounced Scriptural and valid, 
then the Church of Rome must be admitted to 
be a true church of Christ, visible. 

But if Protestants admit this, they surrender 
their own claims to be true churches of Christ, 
because they, in separating from the true Church 
of Christ, become schismatics. But they were 
excluded and anathematized by the true Church, 
and therefore their ministers were deprived of 
all authority to baptize, or to administer Church 
ordinances. 

But should Protestants deny the validity of 
Romish baptisms, they would thereby deny that 
the Church of Rome is a Scriptural church, and 
consequently that she could administer valid 
ordinances. 

By taking this ground, all can again see that 
they would effectually destroy themselves — for 
no Christian Pedobaptist has any other baptism 



14 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

than he received from the priests of Rome. 
Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, Knox, and all the 
first ministers, and all those who composed the 
first societies of the Reformers, were baptized by 
Roman Catholic priests, and in the Church of 
Rome, and consequently their baptisms are un- 
scriptural and invalid. But if their baptisms are 
invalid, then their societies can not be considered 
churches in any sense, as there can be no 
church without baptism ; and if not churches, 
Protestant ministers have no Scriptural right 
either to preach the Gospel, or baptize others 
into their societies ! Moreover, by so doing 
they deceive and mislead the people, causing 
them to believe they are baptized, when, in 
fact, they are not ; causing the people to be- 
lieve that they are in visible churches of Christ, 
when, in fact, and according to the admissions 
of these leaders, they are not, but in human 
societies, that can never administer the ordi- 
nances of Christ's Church ! ! 

That the above are plain statements of facts, 
the following history will show. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 15 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE QUESTION AMONG PRESBYTERIANS. 

The Report of the Old School General Assembly in 1845 — Ita 
Answer fatal to the Ecclesiastical Claims of Presbyterians 
and all Protestants. 

^HE question of the validity of Romish 
iyi baptisms has been up for discussion no 
less than three times before the Pres- 
byterian General Assembly, within the 
past few years; and with each discus- 
sion and attempt to settle it, the more unsettled 
it appears to be left, and the greater the dis- 
satisfaction arising from it. We have not at 
hand a digest of the acts of the Assembly, but 
from the Report below, we find that this ques- 
tion has vexed Presbyterian Assemblies since 
the year 1790, and has been bequeathed, unset- 
tled, to each succeeding generation. 

It was before Parliament so early as 1558, 
as we shall see. 




16 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

So early as 1790, Presbyterians decided that 
the Romish Church was not a true church, and 
her ordinances, therefore, invalid. 

It appeared in 1829, and was indefinitely 
postponed, for reasons given by one who was at 
that time a member of the Assembly: 

"I was in the General Assembly of the Pres- 
byterian Church in 1829, (a body of about two 
hundred members,) when a question was sent us 
for decision : ' Are the baptisms of Popish 
priests to be accepted by our [Presbyterian] 
Churches as valid baptisms V It was discussed, 
and we should have voted 'No,' nearly unani- 
mously; but an influential and more shrewd one 
— secretly reflecting that all our baptisms orig- 
inally came from Popery — moved and obtained 
an indefinite postponement of the subject/'* 

It reappeared again in the year 1835, when 
the Assembly decided that the Romish Church 
was "apostate from Christ, and no true church,'' 
and her priests as usurpers of the sacred func- 
tions of the ministry, consequently, their bap- 
tisms null and void. 

• J. F. Bliss \n " Popery and Protestantism Compared*' 



DEATH liY THREE HORNS. 17 

But notwithstanding this strong decision, ia 
1845, the Presbytery of Ohio sent up the ques- 
tion for a re-settlement. 

The General Assembly met in Cincinnati, 0., 
May 15, 1835, and the following is its report, 
m extensOy on the subject : 

KEPORT. 

" The committee appointed to draw up a 
minute expressive of the views of the Assembly, 
TDresented a Report which was read and adopted, 
and is as follows, viz. : 

''The question presented to this Assembly by 
overture from the Presbytery of Ohio, ' Is bap- 
tism in the Church of Rome valid P is one of a" 
very grave character, and of deep practical im- 
portance. The answer to it must involve prin- 
ciples vital to the peace, the purity, and the 
stability of the Church of God. 

''After a full discussion, carried through 
several days, this Assembly has decided, by a 
nearly unanimous vote, that baptism so admin- 
istered is not valid; because, since baptism is an 
ordinance established by Christ in his Churchy 
(Form of Gov., ch. viii ; Matt, xxviii : 19, 20,) 
and is to be administered only by a minister of 
Christ, duly called and ordained to be a steward 
2* 



18 THE tri-lemma; or, 

of the mysteries of God, (Directory, eh. vii: 
sec. 1,) it follows that no rite administered by 
one who is not himself a duly ordained minister 
of the true Church of God, visible, can be re- 
garded as an ordinance of Christ, whatever be 
the name by which it is called, whatever be the 
form employed in its administration. The so- 
called priests of the Romish communion are not 
ministers of Christ, for they are commissioned 
as agents of the Papal hierarchy, which is not 
a church of Christ, but the Man of Sin, apos- 
tate from the truth, the enemy of righteousness 
and of God. She has long [always] lain under 
the curse of God, who has called his people to 
come out of her, that they be not partakers of 
her plagues. 

*'It is the unanimous opinion of all the Re- 
formed Churches, that the whole Papal body, 
though once a branch of the visible Church, has 
long since become utterly corrupt and hope- 
lessly apostate.. It w^as a conviction of this 
which led to the Reformation, and the complete 
separation of the Reformed body from the Papal 
communion. Luther and his coadjutors, being 
duly ordained presbyters at the time when they 
left the Romish communion, which then, though 
tearfully corrupt, was the only visible Church 
in the countries of their abode, were fully 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 13 

authorized by the Word of God to ordain suc- 
cessors in the ministry, and so to extend and 
perpetuate the Reformed Churches as true 
churches of Christ ; while the contumacious ad- 
herence of Rome to her corruptions, as shown 
in the decisions of the Council of Trent, (which 
she adopts as authoritative,) cuts her oft* from 
the visible Church of Christ, as heretical and 
unsound. This was the opinion of the Reform- 
ers ; and it is the doctrine of the Reformed 
Church to this day. In entire accordance with 
this is the decision of the General Assembly of 
our Church, passed in 1835, (see Minutes of 
General Assembly, vol. viii : page 33,) declar- 
ing the Church of Rome to be an apostate 
body. 

*' The decision by the General Assembly of 
1835, renders the return of a negative to the 
inquiry proposed by the Presbytery of Ohio in- 
dispensable on the ground of consistency ; unless 
we are prepared to admit, in direct contra- 
diction to the standards of the Presbyterian 
Church, that baptism is not an ordinance estab- 
lished by Christ in his Church exclusively, and 
that it may be administered by an agent of the 
Man of Sin, an emissary of the Prince of dark- 
ness — that it may be administered in sport or 
in blasphemy, and yet be valid as though ad- 



20 THE tri-lemma; or, 

ministered by a duly commissioned steward of 
the mysteries of God. 

'^Nor can it be urged that the Papal hier- 
archy is improving in her character, and gradu- 
ally approximating to the Scriptural standard. 
She claims to he infallible; her dogmas she pro- 
mulgates as the doctrine of heaven ; and she 
pronounces her heaviest anathemas against any 
and every man who questions her authority, and 
refuses to bow to her /^doctrines. She can not 
recede from the ground she has assumed. She 
has adopted as her own the decisions of the 
Council of Trent, which degrade the AVord of 
God, which claim equal authority for the Apoc- 
rypha as for the New Testament, and \¥liich 
declare the sense held and taught by the holy 
Mother Church, on the authority of tradition and 
of the fathers, to be the true and only sense of 
Scripture. All who deny this position, or who 
question her authority, she denounces with the 
bitterest curses. 

*' She thus perverts the truth of God, she re- 
jects the doctrine of justification by faith, she 
substitutes human merit for the righteousness 
of Christ, and self-inflicted punishment for Gos- 
pel repentance ; she proclaims her so-called 
baptism to be regeneration, and the reception 
of the consecrated wafer, in the Eucharist, to 



I 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 21 

be the receiving of Christ himself, the source and 
fountain of grace, and with him all the grace he 
can impart. Is this the truth ? Is reliance on 
this system true religion ? Can, then, the Papal 
body be a church ? 

"^ The Church, (i. e., the Church visible,) as 
defined in our standards, is the whole body of 
those persons, together Avith their children, who 
make professions of the holy religion of Christ, 
and of submission to his law^s. (Form of Gov., 
ch. ii : sec. 2.) As certainly then, a'S the dog- 
mas and practices of Papal Rome are not the 
holy religion of Christy must it be considered 
that the Papal body is not a church of Christ 
at all ; and if not, then her agents, be they styled 
priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, or pope, 
are not ministers of Christ in any sense, for 
they have no connection with his true, visible 
Church ; and, not being true ministers of Christ, 
they have no power to administer Christian or- 
dinances, and the rite they call baptism is not, 
in any sense, to be regarded as valid Christian 
baptism. 

'' Further, by the perverted meaning they 
affix, and the superstitious rites they have super- 
added to the ceremonies they perform under 
the name of baptism and the Eucharist, the 
symbolic nature and true design of both the or- 



22 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

dinances of baptism and tlie Lord's Supper are 
lost sight of, and utterly destroyed; so that, 
could we by any possibility assign to her the 
name of a churchy she Avould still be a church 
Avithout the two grand ordinances of the Gospel ; 
she neither administers Christian baptism nor 
celebrates the Supper of the Lord. Moreover, 
since, by the eleventh canon of the Council 
of Trent, she declares the efficacy of her ordi- 
nances to depend upon the intention of the ad- 
ministrator, no man can know with certainty 
that her form of administration, in any ordinance, 
is not a mere mocker^'- ; no consistent Papist 
can be certain that he has been duly baptized, 
or that he has received the veritable Eucharist; 
he can not know that the priest who officiates 
at his altar is a true priest, nor that there is 
actually any one true priest, nor any one prelate 
rightly consecrated in the whole Papal commun- 
ion. The Papal hierarchy has, by her own 
solemn acts, shrouded all her doings in uncer- 
tainty, and enveloped all her rites in hopeless 
obscurity. Even on this ground alone, the va- 
lidity of her baptism might safely be denied. 

" Nor is the fact that instances now and then 
occur of apparent piety in the members of her 
communion, and of intelligence, zeal, and con- 
scientiousness in some of her priests, any 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 28 

ground of objection against the position here 
taken by this Assembly. The virtues of indi- 
viduals do not purify the body of which they 
are members. We are to judge of the character 
of a body chximing to be a church of Christ, 
not by the opinions or practices of individual 
members, but by its standards, and its allowed 
practices. Bound as he is by the authority of 
his Church, and that on pain of her heaviest 
malediction, to understand the Scriptures only 
in the sense in which his Church understands 
and explains them, a consistent Papist can not 
receive or hold the true religion, or the doc- 
trines of grace. If he does, he must either re- 
nounce the Papacy, or, hj^pocritically, conceal 
his true sentiments, or he must prepare to brave 
the thunders of her wrath. True religion and 
an intelligent adherence to Papal Rome are ut- 
terly incompatible and impossible. The Church 
and the Papacy are the repelling poles of the 
moral sj^stem. 

"Difficulties may possibly arise in individual 
cases. It may not be easy at all times to say 
whether an applicant for admission to the 
Church of Christ has, or has not, been bap- 
tized ; whether he has been christened by a 
Popish priest or not. In all such doubtful 
cases, the session of a church must act accord- 



24 THE tki-lemma; or, 

ing to the light before them. But it is safer, 
and more conducive to peace and edification, to 
embrace a well-established principle for our 
guidance, and act upon it firmly, in the fear of 
God, leaving all consequences with him, than to 
suffer ourselves, without any fixed principles, to 
lie at the mercy of circumstances. 

"While some other Churches may hesitate to 
carry out fully the principles of the Reforma- 
tion, in wholly repudiating Popish baptism, as 
well as the Popish mass, we, as Presbyterians, 
feel bound to act on the principle laid down by 
our Assembly so long ago as 1790, (see Digest, 
pp. 94, 95,) that, so long as a body is by us 
recognized as a true church, her ordinances are 
to be deemed valid, and no longer. 

^- In 1835, the Assembly declared the Papacy 
to be apostate from Christ, and no true church. 
As we do not recognize her as a portion of the 
visible Church of Christ, we can not consist- 
ently, view her priesthood as other than usurp- 
ers of the sacred functions of the ministry, her 
ordinances as unscriptural, and her baptism as 
totally invalid." 

The religious world must entertain a profound 
respect for the matured decisions of such a body 
as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 25 

Church of America; and the Assembly of 1845 
was said to have presented a ** brilliant array of 
ministers in the first rank of intellectual endow- 
ment." The above Report, it must be conceded 
by all, is a masterly production. Its premises 
are unambiguous and eminently Scriptural. No 
Protestant or Baptist will gainsay them. The 
conclusion is invincible, that the Romish Church 
never had authority to administer baptism, or to 
ordain ministers who could administer valid 
baptism, because she Avas never a true church 
of Christ visible, but always apostate from the 
truth, and the ^' Man of Sin.'' 

But has not the General Assembly as clearly 
demonstrated that Presbyterian and all Protest- 
ant baptisms are no baptisms^ as it has that 
"there is no baptism in the Romish Church?" 

We ask the serious, candid reader to compare 
the premises in the above Report, and the plain 
facts of history. 

I. If it be true that no baptism is valid unless 
administered by '' a duly ordained ministfr of 
the true Church of God visibhy'^ (though we 
3 



26 THE tri-lemma; or, 

should grant that the Church of Rome is, and 
ever has been, such a church,) even then no Pres- 
byterian or Pedobaptist can have a reasonable 
assurance that he has been truly baptized. 

That Presbyterians, in common with all the 
Reformed or Protestant sects, received their 
baptisms and ordinations from the Romish apos- 
tasy, is denied by no one, is admitted by the 
Assembly itself. 

That the Romish Church did, from its ''first 
coming and working after the manner of Satan," 
corrupt the design and administration of bap- 
tism, is well known to the merest tyro in histor- 
ical reading. She, at a very early day, before 
her universal Bishop sat upon the seven hills of 
Rome, in the seat, to exercise all the powers of 
the Dragon — Pagan Rome — ascribed a saving 
eflScacy to baptism, and taught that without it 
there was no salvation. This led her to provide 
for its administration to all in every period of 
life, and under every necessitous circumstance 
Under ordinary circumstances, the duly ordained 
priest was the appointed administrator; but, if 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 27 

ir langer of death, and no priest was at liand, 
a !ayman; and if he could not be had, any one, 
Hijle or female, a midwife, cook, or scullion, or 
even heretic, infidel, or Turk ! and if water could 
not be procured, that wine, or milk, or any fi aid 
might be used ! ! 

Such was the sacredness of baptism in the 
eye of '' Holy Mother," that when it was ad- 
ministered by boys in sport upon each other, it 
was held by her as valid baptism and conferring 
salvation ! 

It is related by Ruffinus, and indorsed by 
other waiters, that Alexander, bishop of Alex- 
andria, once saw a parcel of boys engaged in a 
play, called '' boy bishop," in which they were 
wont to imitate all things usually performed in 
the Church, especially the administration of 
baptism. This worthy bishop conferred wath a 
council of his clergy, and the conclave solemnly 
resolved, that " the baptism so administered by 
these boys in play was lawful and valid, and 
was not to be repeated." 

Now, unquestionably, thousands and tens of 
thousands, received baptism in the Eomish 



28 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OK, 

Church by these informal and blasphemous 
ways, and it has been strongly said:* 

*'Who can tell, then, but that the Presbyte- 
rian Churches of America and Europe derived 
their baptism from a layman, a midwife, a cook, 
a scullion, an infidel, or a Turk ? — or perhaps 
from some baptism administered by boys in 
sport ? We fearlessly assert that no one can 
tell. And perhaps, too, their baptism was de- 
rived from a case where no water could be pro- 
cured, and wine, or milk, or something of the 
Bort, was used. And certainly, if regularly de- 
rived, it w^as administered in greasy w^ater, for 
'Holy Mother' requires oil to be poured in the 
water ! At all events, is not the presumption 
irresistible in favor of their receiving it from 
those abandoned profligates who disgraced the 
priestly name during the dark ages ; when, accord- 
ing to Chillingworth, *of a hundred seeming 
priests, it was doubtful if there was one true one V 

"But w^ho among the Papal officials may be 
considered a ' duly ordained minister of the true 
church of God, visible ?' Will our Presbyterian 
brethren claim to derive their baptism from his 
Holiness, the head of the Romish Church? No; 

♦ Western Baptist Ecvicw, Vol. T, p. 12. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 29 

they esteem him no minister of Christ. Will 
they derive it from ai'chbishops, bishops, priests, 
etc.? No; they affirm that no such officers 
belong to the ' true Church of God, visible. 
Luther was ordained a priest^ (not a presbyter^ 
as the Assembly declares,) and the thought of it 
in after life made him shudder. The officiating 
bishop gave him the cup, and said, ' Receive the 
power of offering sacrifice for the living and 
the dead.' ' That the earth did not then swal- 
low us both up,' says Luther, ' Avas an instance 
of the patience and long-suffering of the Lord!' 
He was a priest^ and nOt a duly ordained min- 
ister of the true Church ! And Calvin, if we 
may believe Beza, was never ordained even a 
priest. He never received 'orders in any other 
way -than by tonsure,'^ In a word, should their 



* *^ The tonsure in the Komish Church may be receiver? 
after the age of seven years. It is the first part of the 
ceremony of ordination. The candidate presents himseli^, 
in a black cassock, before the bishop, with a surplice on 
the right arm, and a lighted taper in his hand. He kneels, 
and the hishop standing, covered with his miter, repeats a 
prayer, and several verses from the Scriptures. The 
bishop, then sitting, cuts five different parcels of hair from 
the head of the candidate, who repeats these words, ' The 
Lord IS yny inheritance^ Putting off his miter, the bishop 
Bays a prayer over the person tonsured; an anthem is 
Bung by the choir ; then a prayer, in the middle of whi fa 
3* 



30 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

chain of succession not have been rudely broken 
by some layman, woman, 'boy bishop,' or infi- 
del, still consistency compels the Presbyterians' 
to recognize the Papal hierarchy as duly or- 
dained ministers in the true Church — to admit, 
to say the least, that, in the Church of the Gos- 
pel dispensation, there is an established priest/- 
hood, not ' called of God, as was Aaron,' to offer 
gifts and sacrifices^* All this, we say, must be 
admitted, and yet no Presbyterian Avill admit it; 
or else, according to the General Assembly, there 
is no baptism in the Presbyterian Church ! '' 

But bad as this is, it is not the worst. 

II. In asserting that Calvin and Luther^ and 
ill the first ministers of the Reformation^ received 
valid baptism in the Romish Churchy as it doeSj 
the General Assembly annulled the baptisms of 
all Presbyterians and Pedobaptists ! 

I submit the reasonmg of the editor of the 
"Western Baptist Review" upon this proposi- 
tion : 

,tlie bishop puts the surplice on the candidate for orders, 
and says, 'May the Lord clothe thee with ihy new yiame. 
The ceremony is concluded by the candidate's presenting 
the wax taper to the bishop, who gives him his blessing." 
—Dr. Hurde's Rites and Ctremoniea^ p. 282. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 31 

*' If the Reformers were baptized at all, if 
their baptism was valid, (and this was taken for 
granted by the Assembly,) then they were bap- 
tized by those who were duly ordained ministers 
of ' the true Church of God, visible.' But they 
were baptized by priests of the Church of 
Rome ; therefore, the Church of Rome was • the 
true Church of God, visible,' at the time of the 
Reformation ! Indeed, the General Assembly 
seems to have embraced fully this conclusion. 
It says: 'Luther and his coadjutors, being duly 
ordained presbyters [alias " priests"] at the 
time they left the Romish communion — which 
then, though fearfully corrupt, was the only 
visible Church in the countries of their abode — 
were fully authorized by the Word of God to 
ordain successors in the ministry, and so to ex- 
tend the Reformed Churches, as true Churches 
of Christ.' Ay, it was necessary to the argu- 
ment, not merely to affirm that the Romish was 
' the only visible Church' in the countries of tho 
Reformers, but that she was emphatically ' the 
true Church of God, visible ;' or, according to 
the showing of the Assembly, Luther and his 
coadjutors could not administer the ordinances, 
and could not ' extend the Reformed Churches, 
as true Churches of Christ.' For, remember, 
the position is roundly maintained, that no one 



32 THE tpwI-lemma; or, 

can administer the ordinances, unless ' duly or- 
dained in the true Church of God, visible.' If 
Luther and his coadjutors were authorized to ad- 
minister baptism — and the Assembly say they 
were — then, according to the same authority, 
they were duly ordained ministers of 'the true 
Church of God, visible ; and we learn, from the 
same source, that they were ordained by the 
Romish Church ! ! ! — thus making the Romish 
^ the true Church of God, visible' ! ! 

*' We do not question for a moment the right 
of the General Assembly to declare the Romish 
Church ' the true Church of God, visible,* in the 
days of the Reformers ; but surely such a dec- 
laration, if received, must utterly destroy all 
confidence in the judgment of Luther and his 
coadjutors, who vehemently testified that the 
Church of Rome was Antichrist and the Whore 
of Babylon ! But grant the assumption that 
Luther and his coadjutors were duly ordained 
presbyters in the Romish Church, or ' the true 
Church of God, visible,' and what follows ? Why, 
that in leaving the Church in which they were 
' duly ordained presbyters,' Luther and his 
coadjutors left ' the Church of God, visible !' 
This is so plain that the blind may see it. But 
this is not all — it is but the beginning For, 
if this Church could ' duly ordain' them, sKb 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 33 

could duly depose them. If she could give the 
power she could take it away. IIow, then, 
could Luther and his coadjutors be ^ fully 
authorized by the Word of God to ordain suc- 
cessors in the ministry/ seeing that the Church 
that made them ministers — ay, ' the true Church 
of God, visible' — had deposed them from office, 
and solemnly excluded them from fellowship ? 
Dr. Rice, in one of his speeches on this question, 
told the Assembly : ' If the Pope has the au- 
thority to put any one into the Church, he has 
authority to put out, and then we are all out, 
and we may as well quit the discussion, and go 
home.' Very true. The remark w^as worthy of 
the logical acumen of Dr. Rice. And it is just 
as true, that if the Romish Church had authority 
to baptize and 'duly ordain Luther and his 
coadjutors, she had the authority to depose them 
from office, and to exclude them. Indeed, the 
authority is the same, and can not be separated 
BO as to extend to the one and not to the other. 
It does not matter whence the authority v*^as de- 
rived — from heaven, earth, or hell — it was just 
the same in the one case as the other — was just 
as effectual in unmakincr as in makino; them min- 
isters, and in excluding them from, as including 
them in, the pale of 'the true Church of God, 
visible.' These conclusions are natural, neces- 



34 THE tri-lemma; or, 

sary, and irresistible. If the Romish Church 
was the true Church, then the Reformers were 
deposed and excommunicated ; if she was not 
the true Church, then they were never baptized, 
nor ordained to the ministry. Let the Presby- 
terians take either horn of this dilemma, and, 
their General Assembly being witness, they are 
without baptism, without a ministry, and with- 
out a Church !'^ 

Once more: 

III. The Papal liierareliy^ at the time of the 
Heforinatioriy ivas no more the true Church of 
Christy visible^ than noio^ and her baptisms^ there- 
fore^ were no more valid then than they are to-day. 

The same editor says : 

" Examine all the arguments advanced by the 
General Assembly to prove that the Romish 
Church is no Church, and her baptism no bap- 
tism, and do they not apply with equal force and 
power to her condition at the time of, and prior 
to, the Reformation ? ' The so-called priests of 
the Romish communion,' says the Assembly, 
* are not ministers of Christ, for they are com- 
missioned as agents of the Papal hierarchy, 
which is not a Church of Christ, but the Man of 
Sin, apostate from the truth, the enemy of 



DEATH BY TIITIEE IIOHNS. 35 

righteousness and of God.' And Avhat were 
Luther and his coadjutors, when priests in the 
Romish communion, but the commissioned agents 
of tlie Papal hierarchy, and the sworn vassals of 
the Pope of Rome ? It was not the Reforma- 
tion, nor yet the decision of the Presbyterian 
General Assembly, in 1835, ' declaring the 
Church of Rome an apostate bod}^, that made it 
so. That society, controlled by and subservient 
to, the Papal hierarchy, never was ' the true 
Church of God, visible.' The Church in Rome, 
founded by the apostles, and the Papal hierarchy, 
were never identified, never had any relationship, 
and were always as opposite to each other as 
light and darkness. The coming of the Papacy 
was ' after the working of Satan, \_not of the 
apostles,] with all power, and signs, and lying 
wonders, and with all deceivableness of unright- 
eousness, in them that perish.' From the be- 
ginning, it was * the Man of Sin and Son of 
Perdition, Avho opposeth and exalteth himself 
above all that is called God, or that is wor- 
shiped ; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple 
of God, showing himself that he is God.' (2 
Thess. ii : 4, 9, and 10.) The Papacy, accord- 
ing to Protestants, ' ascended out of the bottom- 
less pit, and shall go into perdition,' and has 
been, from the first, full of the names of 



36 

blasphemy — * Mystery, Babylon the great, the 
motlier of harlots, and abominations of the 
earth/ (Rev. xvii, passim.) Protestant com- 
mentators tell us that Daniel the prophet fore- 
told the rise and reign of the Papal Church in 
the ' little horn ' that came up among the ten 
horns of the fourth beast, ' before Avhom there 
were three of the first horns plucked up by the 
roots; and, behold, in this horn were eyes like 
the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great 
things/ ' And the same horn made war with 
the saints, and prevailed against them.' (Dan. 
vii, passim.) These passages, and many others 
quoted by Protestants as applicable to the Papal 
Church, show, if they have been rightly applied, 
that she never was the Church of God, but 
always the opposite, and the bloodiest enemy of 
the saints. 

" It was argued before the General Assembly 
by several, and especially by Dr. Rice, that in 
the days of Luther, ' there was still salt enough 
in the Church [of Rome] to pi-eserve its exist- 
ence as a Church of Christ, and the adminis- 
tration of Scriptural ordinances by her officers 
was valid. But the time came when the voice 
of God was heard : " Come out of her, my 
people.'' The great body of true disciples 
obeyed the command and came out. Some true 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 3? 

disciples no doubt remained, hut ^\e can no 
lv)nger consider the Church of Rome as the 
Church of Christ.' 

" With great deference to the opinion of so 
able a divine, we must beg leave to protest most 
earnestly against the sentiment that the Whore 
of Babylon was ever the Bride, the Lamb's wifc^ ! 
No amount of 'salt' could effect such a Avon- 
derful transformation as this ! And we most 
solemnly protest, too, against the doctrine that 
' Scriptural ordinances ' Avere ever administered 
by the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, and 
his ' commissioned agents.' They were to do 
many Avonders, according to the Scripture, but 
no such wonder as this — for they w^ere ' l^^ing 
wonders,' which ' Scriptural ordinances' are not. 
Besides, what was the character of the Romish 
Church before the Almighty called upon his 
people to come out of her ? Let the Scriptures 
answer: 'Babylon the gre<it is fallen, is fallen, 
and is become the habitation of devils, and the 
hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every 
unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have 
drunk of the w^ine of the wrath of her forni- 
cation, and the kings of the earth have com- 
mitted fornication with her, and the merchants 
of the earth have w\axed rich through the 

abundance of her delicacies.' (Rev. xviii : 2, 3.) 
4 



38 TIIK TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

Througliout tlie Scriptures, admitting the inter* 
pretations of Protestants, the Papal Church is 
represented as anta'gonistical to the people of 
God. They composed no part of her. She is 
represented as making war with the saints, and 
overcoming them; as drunk with the blood of 
God's people ; not as making w^ar with and 
overcoming herself; and as being drunk with 
her own blood. Tliat God had a people in her 
bounds is true; and God warns them to get out 
of those bounds, lest, in destroying her, they 
should be destroyed; just as Christ warned his 
disciples to escape from Judea when they saw 
the abomination of desolation standing where it 
should not. But the fact that there were true 
and real saints in the bounds of the Papal 
Church, could prove nothing ; the General 
Assembly admits that she includes many now. 
There are many in Germany and elsewhere in 
her dominions that are now protesting in thunder 
tones against her corruptions and abominations. 
Indeed, Dr. Rice has fully answered himself; 
for, during the same debate, he said : ^ The 
question is not whether any who belong to the 
Church of Rome are, or may be, truly pious. 
It is admitted on all hands, that there may be 
members of that community who are the true 
childien of God; but still they are not membera 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 39 

of any branch of the Church of Christ on earth. 
The validity of baptism does not rest on the 
piety merely of the person administering, but 
upon his authority to administer. 

"If the piety of a portion of her members 
can not make mystical Babylon the Church of 
God now, neither could it before the Reforma- 
tion. There are many pious people in the 
United States — more, a great deal, in propor- 
tion, than ever belonged at one time to the 
Romish Church — and yet, the United States 
is not the Church of God. 

"But the General Assembly seemed to think 
that there was more truth in the Church of 
Rome before than since the Reformation — that 
she never became hopelessly corrupt in doctrine 
until the Council of Trent. This we presume 
to be a mistake. The Council of Trent but 
uttered the voice of Papacy in the form of de- 
crees. There was not a sentiment then uttered 
that had not previously been held by the hier- 
archy. Let the history of the Romish Church 
speak. Long before this Council, did she not 
claim for the Pope the attributes of holiness 
end infiUibility ? Did she not assert that she 
was Christ's vicar upon earth ? — Lord God the 
Pope? Did she not claim for him dominion, 
temporal and spiritual, over the whole earth; 



40 THE tri-lemma; or, 

and det taj^ that he might dispose of crowns, 
and kingdoms, and continent*, at his sovereign 
pleasure ? That he had a right to dethrone 
kings, absolve subjects from their allegiance, 
and by his mandate, make that sin which was 
no sin, and convert sin into virtue? Were not 
her garments reeking with the blood of God's 
people? Had she not thrown down the altars, 
and subverted the w^orship of God ; filling her 
temples with the images of saints and angels, 
and establishing the adoration of relics and dead 
men's bones ? Had she not licensed sin by sell 
ing indulgences; annulled the doctrine of re 
pentance by her superstitious penances, and tha 
of justification by faith in Jesus, by foolish ob 
servances and human merit ? In a word, sh^ 
was stained with every crime, foul with every 
pollution ; had assumed and exercised the most 
hellish powers ; had propagated as divine truths 
the most outrageous falsQhoods ; had uttered 
the most horrid blasphemies, and had filled the 
world with error, fraud, superstition, and blood ! 
The earth was drunk with the wine of her for- 
nication. 

'•We have read her history to little purpose 
if, before the Reformation, the Romish Church 
was not a more formidable enemy to truth, (wt? 
lo not say more abominably corrupt.) than sh.« 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 41 

is HOW. Then her abominations were less dis- 
guised. No palliation of tliem was attempted. 
Her mien was then more haughty. Kings trem- 
bled at her frown. The thunders of the Vati- 
can shook the world. The fires of her persecu- 
tions lighted up all lands, and the swords of her 
crusaders gleamed in all eyes. The blood of 
martyrs crimsoned the Avhole earth. ' The world 
w^ondered after the beast.' She sat a queen and 
reigned without a rival. Slie had almost ban- 
ished the Word of God from the habitations of 
men, and crushed to death the few and feeble 
adherents of the truth. ' Darkness covered the 
earth, and gross darkness the people.' 

" But she is no longer so formidable and so 
terrible. No kings now tremble at her frown. 
She has no crowns, and kingdoms, and conti- 
nents to dispose of. The Vatican now speaks 
in almost harmless tones, and her mandates are 
held in derision and contempt by nations and 
multitudes that once quailed before them as the 
decrees of destiny. The fires of her persecu- 
tions have been extinguished, and her army of 
crusaders disbanded. Iler whole policy has 
been changed. She has substituted craft and 
cunning for force and persecution. She suppli- 
cates where she once commanded. And, in 
spite of her opposition, the Bible is being mul- 

r 



42 THE tri-lemma; or, 

tipHed, and the Gospel preached beyond all 
example. The army of truth is invading the 
territories of the Papal Church, and rapidly 
pressing to her utter overthrow. We appeal 
to all candid minds — and let them answer in the 
light of the Bible and of history — if the Romish 
Church, under Gregory XVL, is not a Church 
of Christ, was she such a Church under Greg- 
ory VII. ? Can, in a word, the most tortuous 
construction of the Scriptures, or the most inge- 
nious application of the 'salt/ of logic, trans- 
form the Man of Sin into the Church of God ? 
or the Whore of Babylon into the Bride of the 
Redeemer ?" 

From the fatal conclusions of the positions 
taken by the General Assembly, there is no 
possible escape. The baptisms and ordinances 
of all Protestants are nullified, whether Romish 
baptisms are valid or invalid. 

There is one position that might be taken, if 
one could be found willing to destroy the peo- 
ple's confidence in the Word of God, in the 
truth of prophecy, in the veracity, faithfulness, 
and power of Jesus Christ, to save his party 
organization. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 48 

That position is to afSrm that the gates of 
hell had triumphed over the Church of Christ; 
the last visible Church, that composed his king- 
dom on earth, had been ^' given to another peo- 
ple" — had been destroyed from the face of the 
earth, — and that " the faith" was the second 
time given to the world for another trial with 
the powers of darkness; that the kingdom set 
up by the God of heaven — the Church upbuilt 
by Jesus Christ himself — having yielded to the 
assaults of hell, Christ divinely commissioned 
Luther and Calvin, and their coadjutors, to see 
if they could not do better than he had done, 
in establishing visible Churches that could stand 
against the powers of Satan ; that Christ com- 
missioned these men, directly, as he did John 
the Baptist, to preach, and to baptize, and re- 
cover the victory, which he had so ignomini- 
ously lost, from the hands of Satan ! 

The man who would say this, would brand 
the Bible with falsehood, and Christ with impos- 
ture, it is true ; but what will not man do rather 
than confess that he is wrong, and has led 
others into error? It may possibly be thought 



44 THE tri-lp:mma ; or, 

that no Clirlstinn man would advocate, before 
the Christian world, such a position. 

What will the reader say when Ave inform him 
that one of the members of that very Assembly 
did rise upon that floor and urge the Presby- 
terian Assembly to take this very ground! 
That man was Professor Thornwell. We quote 
one paragraph from his speech : 

" The Reformers themselves evidently had an 
extraordinary commission to rebuild the walls oi 
Jerusalem. The towers, bulwarks, and palaces 
of the city of the great King had fallen into 
ruins, and they were raised up, in the providence 
of God, to reconstruct the edifice according to 
the pattern shown them in the mount. Their 
authority was not derived from Rome, nor from 
any of her prelates ; the seal of their commission 
was not the imposition of Episcopal hands, nor 
the transmission of sacerdotal grace. They 
were called of Grod, and derived their authority 
from Christ; and in consequence of that call 
and of that authority, the Churches which they 
formed were as truly Churches of the Redeemer 
as those which were planted by the hands of the 
Apostles." 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 45 

It was well that the General Assembly did not 
countenance such irreverent utterances,* pre- 
ferring to peril the ecclesiastical claims of all 
Protestants, in the eyes of man, and be repudi- 
ated, -it may be, ratlier than to assume this 
attitude toward Christ. 

Suppose it Avere granted that God raised up 
Luther, and Calvin, and others, to do what his 
Son had ftiiled to do, did he not inspire them ? 
Did he not deliver "the faith" to them, as he 
did to the saints at first? Did he leave them to 
teach for doctrine and for observance whatever 
they severally saw lit in their own unassisted 
wisdom to do? — to form visible Churches after 
patterns not shown in the mount, but after their 
own devisings ? 

The position of Professor Thornwell forces 
him to claim inspiration for the founders of the 
Reformed Churches. And then, what follows ? 
In what a light is God placed by this assump- 
tion, and Christ, also, if he essayed the second 
time to raise up visible Churches? Did God 

* Do not Methodists take this \(ivy ground with refer- 
ence to the Wesleys ? See their Discipline, page 1. 



46 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

inspire Luther to teach consubstantiation, and 
Calvin to denounce it as false and impious? 
Luther to give one form' of Church government, 
and Calvin a different one ? and so on through 
all the variant doctrines and practices of Prot- 
estants ; until, displeased with these, he raised 
up Wesley to deny his sovereignty and salvation 
by grace, without works, as taught by Calvin, 
Luther, and Paul ? 

We leave this subject to the serious and 
prayerful reflection of the reader. 

If no baptism be valid except administered by 
a duly ordained minister of Christ in a true 
Church of Christ, visible, as the Assembly truly 
decided, let Presbyterians and the world decide 
if the baptisms of Luther, John Calvin, John 
Knox, or any one of the first Presbyterian min- 
isters or members, Avere valid. 

Here is a literal history of the baptism ol 
John Calvin, the father and founder of Presby- 
terianism. We take it from the columns of an 
exchano;e paper : 

"The Baptism of John Calvin. — John Cnl- 
vin was born of Papal parents, and received his 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 47 

baptism from a priest of mystical Babylon — a 
consecrated emissary of ' the man of sin and 
Bon of perdition.' While an infant, ' muling 
and puking in his nurse's arms/ he was taken 
by his parents or sponsors to the nearest Papal 
meeting-house, to have his soul regenerated. 
At the door of the Church he was met by the 
priest, to denote that as little Calvin was not 
yet of the number of the faithful, he had no 
right to enter into that sacred place ; and after 
asking the little fellow what he demanded of the 
Church, and telling him the conditions on which 
the demand would be granted, (the parents an- 
swering when necessary, in the name of the 
child,) the priest proceeded to prepare him for 
the reception of the sacrament of salvation, as 
follows: 1st. He breathed upon him and said, 
Depart from me^ thou unclean spirit^ and give 
place to the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. 2d. He 
made the sign of the cross upon his forehead. 
8d. He put a little blessed salt into the babe's 
mouth, saying, 'Receive the salt of Avisdom; 
may it be unto thee a propitiation unto ever- 
lasting life.' 4th. The priest then proceeded to 
exorcisms by which, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
and through the merits of his death upon the 
cross, (the sign of which he frequently made on 
little Calvin,) he commanded the devil to depart 



48 THE tri-lemma; or, 

from the child's soul, and ordered him to give 
place unto the Holy Ghost. 

''By these ceremonies, the infant Calvin being 
prepared to be admitted into the Church, as one 
delivered, in a great measure (so his parents 
believed) from the power of Satan, and belong- 
ing to Jesus Christ, the priest permitted him to 
be brought into that part of the Church where 
the baptismal font was, saying, '•Enter into the 
Church of God^ that thou mayent have 'part with 
Christ unto everlasting life,^ And while pro- 
ceeding to the font, the old Calvin (for young 
Calvin) recited with an audible voice, the 
Apostle's Creed and the Lord's Prayer. Then 
the priest recited another exorcism, and at the 
end of it, touched the ears and nostrils of the 
infant Calvin, with a little spittle, saying, 
* Ephpheta^ that is, ' Be thou opened unto an 
odor of sweetness; hut he thou put to flighty 
Devil^ for the judgment of God ivill he at hand.^ 

" They were now at the baptismal font. The 
waters in this font had been solemnly blessed 
on the eve of Easter and Pentecost, to serve 
throughout the whole year. In blessing these 
waters a lighted torch was put into the font, to 
represent the Divine love, which is communicated 
to the soul by baptism and the light of good 
examples, which all who are baptized ought to 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 49 

give, and holy oil and chrism were mixed with 
the water, to represent the spiritual union of the 
soul with God, by the grace received by bap- 
tism. 

'' Before these waters were applied to little 
Calvin, he had to undergo some such examina- 
tion as the following : 

"-Priest — What is your name? 

'^ Little Calvin, — John Calvin.* 

*• Priest, — John, dost thou renounce the devil 
and all his works ? 

'•'Little Calvin, — I do renounce them. 

'^ Priest, — Dost thou detest and abhor all the 
maxims and vanities of the world, which are the 
pomps of the devil, and abhor all sins which 
are his works ? 

" lAttle Calvin, — I detest and abhor them all, 

'^ Priest, — Dost thou believe in God, the 
Father, Almighty, the maker of heaven and 
earth ? 

'' Little Calvin, — I do believe. 

'^ Priest, — Dost thou believe in Jesus Christ, 
his only Son, our Lord, who was born and suf- 
fered death ? 

'^ Little Calvin, — I do believe. 

* As little Calvin was only a few hours or days old, cf 
course he spoke this through his godfather. 

5 



50 THE tri-lExMma; or, 

'^ Priest. — Dost thou believe in the Holy 
Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, tlie commun- 
ion of saints, the resurrection of the body, and 
life eternal ? 

"Little Calvin. — I do believe. 

'^ Priest. — John, do you desire to be baptized? 

'^Little Calvin. — I do desire it. 

"Then the priest anointed him with holy oil 
on the breast and between the shoulders, mak- 
ing the sign of the cross and saying, ' I anoint 
thee with the oil of salvation, in Christ Jesus 
our Lord, that thou mayest have life everlast- 
ing." The father then held the babe, bare- 
headed, over the font, the priest poured the 
greasy water, consecrated as afore written, into 
the child's face, in the name of the Trinity. 

" Little Calvin was thus made a Christian^ 
and was immediately anointed on the crown of 
the head with holy chrism, to signify that royal 
priesthood to which he was raised by baptism. 
He was clothed with a white garment, as an 
emblem of the spotless innocence with which his 
Roul was adorned; and a lighted torch was put 
into his hand as an emblem of a good example. 

" Thus John Calvin, (who, if he had not come, 
Presbyterianism had not been,) was initiated 
into the Christian Church and made a child of 
God and an heir of glory by baptism I 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 51 

"The Old School General Assembly of tho 
Presbyterian Churcli in the United States, a few 
years ago, decided that no baptism was valid 
except administered by a regular ordained min- 
ister in the true Church of God, visible ; that 
the Romish Church was not the Church of God 
at all, and that, therefore, baptism administered 
within its pales and b}'' its priesthood was no 
baptism ! Then, according to Presbyterian prin- 
ciples, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, John Knox, 
and their cotemporary Reformers, all of whom 
were baptized by Papists, had no Christian bap- 
tism ! The chain of baptismal successors from 
the Apostolic Church to the Presbyterian Church, 
which the General Assembly had declared to be 
essential to valid baptism, has been broken 
asunder, and all the spiritual smiths beneath the 
skies can not mend it. And. thus our Presby- 
terian brethren, by the solemn decision of their 
highest ecclesiastical tribunal, have no baptism!'' 



62 THE tri-lemma; oe. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Question in the New School Presbyterian General Assem- 
bly, 1854 — Eeports of Speeches, etc — The Tri-lemma, 

i)N the year 1854, this question carue up for 
discussion in the New School General 
Assembly, and was discussed for two 
days or more. It was a practical ques- 
tion, since the sessions of one or more 
of their societies had received members upon 
their Romish baptisms, and one Mr. Riley, who 
had been so received, had been, for some time, 
a minister among them, and had baptized not a 
few infants and adults. 

We have used great industry to obtain as full 
a report of the discussion and speeches as pos- 
sible, from the most authentic sources, religious 
and secular. 

The following Reports, which appeared at the 
time in the columns of the New York Observer, 
the organ of the N. S. Presbyterians, can be 



DEATH BY THREE HORXS. 58 

lelied apon, so far as they go. There were 
certain sentiments advanced by distinguished 
doctors of divinity that the editors of the Ob- 
server did not wish for their Liy readers to see, 
lest their fears should be alarmed. 

For instance, we may suppose that Mr. Riley, 
in substance, said, when he moved that it was 
inexpedient for the Assembly to express an 
opinion on the subject : 

"Mr. President, how can this Assembly de- 
cide that the baptisms received by the priests 
of Rome are invalid, and save the ecclesiastical 
existence of Presbyterian Churches? How many 
have been received from that communion, since 
Presbyterianism commenced, in the sixteenth 
tjentury, upon their Romish baptisms, that have 
become ministers^ and have baptized scores of 
othtr ministers, and thousands of members. 
What will you do with all these ministers, and 
with those whom they have baptized, if you 
decide this question negatively ? I, myself, sir, 
liave received no other than Romish baptism, 
and was received among you upon it, and I am, 
to-day, satisfied with it. Will this Assembly 
nullify it by an ex post facto law? If this Re- 
port is adopted, you will nullify it, and declare 



o4 THE tri-lemma; or, 

me unbaptized. What will jou do with me? 
exclude me, or re-baptize me? To be consist- 
ent, you must demand my re-bnptism, and all 
those I have baptized since I have been a min- 
ister among you, and you must pursue tliis 
course with all those among you, who have 
either been baptized by Romish priests, or wlio 
have been baptized by those ministers who have 
been so baptized ; and where will j^ou stop 
sir? — where will you stop? Can you tell? 1 
can tell you where you will have to begin — with 
Calvin, and Zvvingle, and Beza, and Knox, and 
all the first Presbyterian ministers, and re-bap- 
tize them, and all whom they baptized, and so 
on down to the present. I said I Avas satisfied 
with my baptism, thougli it was administered by 
a priest of Rome, and I expect to be so long as 
I am a Protestant ; for why should I not be ? 
Who of you, what Presbyterian minister in the 
United States, can give me a more valid o*e ? 
You will not say, — no Presbyterian will say, — . 
that your own Calvin was not validly baptized! 
I was baptized in the same Church, and by the 
same minister — a RoMisii priest ! ! The bap- 
tisms and ordinances of all Presbyterian minis- 
tors are from Romish priests indirectly — mine, 
directly. If my worthy compeers around me 
were baptized in the remote streams, I caii 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 56 

claim to have received it at the pure fountain- 
head ! '' 

Such, we suppose, was substantially the speech 
of Mr. Rilev, from the meager outlines we have 
been able to gather. 

We submit the Reports as published in the 
New York Observer. 

^'Extract from Report of Proceedings of Pres- 

hyterian General Assembly^ held at Philadel- 

phia, Pa., May 18-30, 1854, as reported in 

New York Observer : 

*' Monday Morning, May 22. — The Committee 
on Romish Baptism, through its Chairman, Dr. 
Hatfield, reported, recommending that the Gen- 
eral Assembly declare that, in their opinion, 
baptism in the Roman Catholic Church is not 
to be regarded as Christian baptism. This 
Report is signed by Revs. Drs. Hatfield and 
Cox. 

" The Rev. Henry B. Smith, D.D., of Union 
Theological Seminary, made a Minority Report, 
That it is inexpedient for the Assembly to 
decide that [such] baptism is necessarily invalid. 

'' We here reserve these Reports, not being 
able to insert them here. 

"Rev. Pr, Barnes moved, that it is inexpe- 



56 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

client for tliis Assembly to decide Romish bap- 
tism necessarily invalid. 

'' Rev. Mr. Niles, of Michigan, moved the 
indefinite postponement of the subject. Tliis 
Avas seconded by Dr. Allen. The motion Avas 
lost. 

" At this point of the debate, the order of the 
day was taken up, etc. 

" Monday Afterrioon, — The Report of the ma- 
jority of the Committee on Romish Baptism was 
taken up. The Rev. Mr. Dobie read the defini- 
tions of baptism as given in Roman Catholic 
catechism.s, to show that there can be no relation 
between our doctrine and that of the Romish 
Church. 

'* Rev. Mr. Riley offered the following Reso- 
lution, viz. : 

^' ' That in view of the great diversity of opin- 
ions, and of practice in the Presbyterian Church, 
on the subject of Popish baptism, and in view 
of the previous action of the Assembly, it may 
be inexpedient for the present Assembly to take 
action in the case.' 

"Dr. Brainerd advocated this amendment, and 
showed the difficulties of taking either Report 
as the dogmatic assertion of a doctrine. For 
instance, if you say Romish baptism is valid, 
your converts from Roine will sometimes con- 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 57 

strain your conscience by asserting that, in their 
estimation, Romish sacraments are valid. If you 
eay that Romish baptism is invalid, you will 
excite prejudice in the minds of Catholics, which 
will prevent your making such advancement 
toward their conversion as you desire. 

" Rev. Mr. Clapp said there might be pious 
persons in the Papal Church. Now, suppose 
such a parent in that faith has his child bap- 
tized, and twenty years after, that child is con- 
verted, will you re-baptize him, when he had 
been consecrated to God in the rite of baptism 
in faith? We can not pass an absolute rule such 
as the Majority Report lays down. 

" Hon. i\Ir. Taylor urged the adoption of the 
Majority Report in a speech of great earnest- 
ness. 

"Rev. Mr. LeDoux would have this Assembly 
leave the subject with the pastors and sessions 
of the Churches to decide each case as it arises. 
He hoped Mr. Riley's resolution might pass, as 
any more stringent rule will embarrass our 
Church. 

" Dr. Beman said : The opponents of the Re- 
port which I sustain may be divided into three 
strata, (I do not mean to call mj opponents fos- 
sils — I mean as a mere figure of speech.) The 
upper stratum considers Rome as a Christian 



58 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

Church, and her ministers as ministers of Christ. 
The middle stratum holds that it is not a Church, 
and that its ministers are not ministers of Christ 
but, as hiymcn, men and Avomen, may, in ex- 
treme cases, administer baptism, therefore Romish 
baptism is valid. Mr. Beman said there was no 
such extreme ease which can be named. If I 
may guess what is an extreme case in their 
estimation, I should say that it means that a 
child is likely to die before an ordained minister 
can get there. If this be what is meant, we are 
on the ground of baptismal regeneration, and on 
the way to Rome. As for those cases in which 
some converted Catholics stand by their Romish 
baptism, no one supposes that they need be 
affected. Thei*e may be except'ons, but in this 
case we are called to make a declaration of sen- 
timent. The lower stratum contains those who 
agree, in the main, with the Report ; and as, in 
the physical world, the lower stratum is so hard 
pressed that its original features are lost, so with 
these men: they are pressed so hard, that you 
find nothing distinctive about them. This is a 
sort of dough-faced operation, into which I will 
not enter. Let us adopt one Report or the 
other. Our standards ftivor the Report, and I 
am not afraid, as a Presbyterian, of these 
standards. They declare the Pope to be Anti- 



DEATH BY TIIPxEE HORNS. 59 

clirist. and that his ministers must be excluded 
from the Christian ministry. Let us not shrink 
from the conclusion which flows from this prin- 
ciple. The Scriptures have decided this thing. 
Ptome is the scarlet harlot riding on the beast 
with seven heads and ten horns. We have some 
Presbyterians who crave to lay a pillow under 
her old aching head, w^hich is about to be 
scathed with the thunderbolts of the Almighty ! 
Kind nurses are they ! — very sisters of charity ! 
This Church is drunk with the blood of saints, 
and yet there are some who advocate the validity 
of a baptism administered by men whose hands 
are dripping with the blood of the saints. As for 
offending the Catholics, it will not produc-e this 
result. It will be wifh them as with a con- 
verted Catholic woman I know of, who, on being 
asked if she wished to be baptized, replied : ' I 
certainly do. I wish to have the last mark of 
the beast washed off.' Mr. Bern an hoped we 
w^ould pass the Report of the Committee, as 
being in accordance w^ith our standards, our 
Bible, and Avith the wants of the age. 

'• Tuesday Morning, May 23.— ^^ ^^ ^ The 
anfinished business of yesterday was resumed, 
viz. : the consideration of Mr. Riley's amendment 
to the motion to adopt the Report of the Com- 
mittee on Romish Baptism, 



60 THE tri-lemma; or, 

'' Dr. James C. Fislier strongly advocated the 
entire repudiation of Romish baptism, and in 
support of this, recited the definition of baptism 
as given in the standards of our Church. He 
said the question turns on this: Is the Papal 
Church in any sense a Christian Church ? Our 
standards denounced it as Antichrist. 

''Dr. Riddle made a happy reply to the ridi- 
cule of Dr* Beman, yesterday, and protested 
against the disposition to bring up hypothetical 
cases to have a deliverance by the General 
Assembly in these. This is not in accordance 
with the analogies of our Supreme Court. It is 
a pure question of abstraction, not brought upon 
an actual case, where matters of discipline are 
involved. We are called on to decide whether 
it is expedient to declare that Popish baptism i3 
necessarily invalid, and not whether the Pope is 
thus or so, and whether the Papal Church is a 
Christian Church or not. At considerable length, 
Dr. P»;iddle argued against the expediency of 
making any deliverance on this point. If made, 
it would not satisfy many consciences. Not only 
is the General Assembly divided, but there is the 
same diversity in the Church at large. 

" Rev. Mr. Boardman said that it was not a 
question in tliese^ but a practical question. Our 
business is to affirm or deny the sentiments of 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 61 

that Report ; and it is expedient for us to affirm 
with emphasis, the invalidity of baptism admin- 
istered by the man of sin. There are three 
questions which will guide my vote : 1. Is the 
Romish Church a true Church ? 2. If it be a 
true Church, is the baptism administered by it 
valid ? 3. Is lay baptism valid ? These points 
Mr. Boardman argued at some length for the 
purpose of sustaining his views in favor of the 
Majority Report. 

^'Rev. J. G. King said it was the desire of 
many of the younger pastors, ' Junior Patri- 
archs,' as they had been facetiously called, to 
have this question discussed. They wanted the 
advice and counsel of this body. They have to 
deal with this question in a practical manner. 

" Dr. Franklin Knox, of San Francisco, said, 
we have no rio-ht to consume time in discussins; 
whether the Roman Church is a Christian Church. 
There are practical difficulties connected with 
this subject, and if you adopt an iron rule (I 
would call it a Papal rule) you will do mischief. 

''Rev. Mr. Snjrder, in an admirable strain, 
advocated the inexpediency of passing the Ma- 
jority Report, not because he did not believe it 
to be true, but because ho did not believe he had 
any right to force his inferences on those who 
differed from him. 
6 



62 THE tri-lemma; or, 

" Rev. Mr. Waterbury moved that a committee 
of three be appointed, to which should be refer- 
red the Avhole business. 

'' Dr. Beman woukl second the motion with a 
smgle modification : that both the papers shall 
be referred to the same committee, with the 
addition of two members of this body, Avith in- 
structions to report at the next Assembly. 

"Mr. Waterbury accepted the suggestion of 
Dr. Beman. 

'' Rev. J. G. King called for a division on the 
question. 

"Dr. Brainerd w^is in favor of the commit- 
ment, and was delighted that we had reached 
such a termination. We expre-s a general prin- 
ciple, and yet preserve the rights of conscience. 

" Rev. Mr. Sherwood was opposed to the mo- 
tion, because many had not expressed their senii- 
ments, and because, also, no good can be secured. 
The next Assembly will have to travel over the 
same ground. We ought to settle the question 
at this meeting of the Assembly. 

" At this point the hour of adjournment ar- 
rested the discussion. 

''Tuesday Afternoon, — The motion of Mr. Wa- 
terbury to refer the Reports on Romish baptism 
to a committee to report to the next Assembly. 
w^as taken up. 



DEATH BY THREE HOIINS. 68 

^'Dr. Spear opposed the motion. He wished 
the Assembly to distinctly vote that they can 
lay down no general Law to bind others in this 
matter. We can fix no rule on this point ; Dr. 
Beman himself acknowledged there were excep- 
tional cases. 

" At this point Mr. Waterbury asked leave to 
withdraw his motion of commitment, and it was 
grapted. 

" The original amendment of Mr. Riley was 
tlien taken up. The discussion was suspended 
at this point, to take up the order of the 
day, etc. 

" Tuesday, May 30. — The subject of Popish 
baptism was indefinitely postponed.'^ 

The following corroborating, and in some 
cases, fuller reports, are from the columns of 
the New York Daily Times : 

PEESBYTEKIAN GENEEAL ASSEMBLY— NEW 
SCHOOL. 

"Philadelphia, Monday, May 22, 1854. 
" This reverend body has occupied itself this 
morning with several grave and exciting sub- 
jects. After a Report commending the Union 
Theological Seminary in New York, and the 
Lane Seminary at Cincinnati, and speaking 



64 THE TllI-LEMMA ; OR, 

encouragingly 'of the projected Seminary at 
Galena, two Reports, majority and minority, 
were presented from a committee previously 
appointed, to consider the question — Is the Bap- 
tism of the Romish Church valid'? The Majority 
Report, signed by Revs. Drs. Hatfield and Cox, 
took ground against the validitj^ of such bap- 
tism. It argued from previous decisions of the 
Assembly; from the Confession of Faith; from 
the " acknowledged apostasy of the Romish 
Church ; and from consistency. As the Church 
of Rome was Antichrist, she w\as not to be . 
recognized as a Christian body, nor her priest- 
hood to be regarded as a Christian ministry. 
All its other sacraments are universally re'^u- 
diated by Protestant Churches ; there was no 
reason why this should not also be. The Re- 
port concluded with these words : 

"^Planting ourselves on the broad and firm 
ground of a Protestant and a pure Christianity, 
and believing that the circumstances of the 
Church and of the age demand of us a manly 
and unambiguous avowal of our faith in rela- 
tion to the pretensions and abominations of this 
'* Mystery of Iniquity,'' this General Assembly 
solemnly declare their conviction that the min- 
isters of the Church of Rome are not authorized 
to administer the sacraments ordained by Christ 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 65 

our Lord in the Gospel ; and that the adminis- 
tration of what is denominated baptism in the 
Roman Catholic Church, is not to be recognized 
as Christian baptism/ 

" Rev. Dr. Smith, of the Union Theological 
Seminary, presented a Minority Report, which 
was read by the Moderator. It argued that it 
was inexpedient for the Assembly to decide that 
baptism in the Roman Catholic Church is neces- 
sarily invalid. A presumptive argument was to 
be found in the unanimous consent of the Re- 
formed Churches and theologians. The French, 
Dutch, German, and English Churches; the 
great Reformers^ divines like Calvin, Tur- 
RETiN, and Hooker, admit the validity of Rom- 
ish baptisms, while contending against the 
corruptions of the Papacy. During the century 
of the Reformation, only the Anabaptists, of all 
the sects of the Reformers, advocated the con- 
trary opinion. With the exception of the Old 
School Presbyterian Church, no considerable 
Protestant body in this country has taken the 
position that Romish baptism is necessarily in- 
valid ; and against that, the Princeton lieper- 
torij^ the great Review of the Church, took 
ground. The "Assembly ought not to decide 
against such a current of testimony, except on 
the strono^est grounds. 



b6 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

"It argued farther, that baptism, like mar' 
riage, may be valid, even when the form of it is 
irregular. Even those Churches Avhich insist 
most strenuously on sacramental grace, allow 
the validity of lay baptism in certain cases. It 
also distinguished between the Roman Catholic 
Church and the Papacy : because the latter was 
corrupt and Antichrist, does not prove that the 
former has none of the elements of a true Chris- 
tian Church. Even a ministry is not essential 
to the being of a Church ; and even in a cor- 
rupt Church there may be a lawful ministry. 
As the Roman Catholic Church, in its public 
confessions, retains Christian truth on funda- 
mental doctrines, as the Trinity and the neces- 
sity of grace, though intermingled and overlaid 
with errors, superinduced by the Papal and 
sacramental systems, it is still to be regarded 
as a Church, and its ministry lawful, despite its 
apostasy, and the sacrament of baptism as ad- 
ministered therein may be held to be valid. 
The Report also argued the inexpediency of 
taking ground against the validity of such bap- 
tism, on the ground of consistency, and the 
relations of the Church to Roman Catholics in 
this country. 

" On the perusal of the two Reports, a lively 
debate sprang up, which elicited a variety of 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 67 

opinions. Some were for postponing it, in order 
to have time to prepare for a regular discussion 
of it; others Avere for a discussion now; others 
still agreed with the advice of Professor Smith's 
Report, that the Assembly take no ground on 
the subject. It transpired in the debate, that 
two of the clergymen of the bod^ were con- 
verted Roman Catholics, one of whom had been 
re-baptized and the other not. Both now agreed 
tJiat there was no good ground for denying the 
validity of Romish baptisms ; because it is not 
to be assumed that the Romish Church is not 
a Christian Churcii, and because the real validity 
of baptism depends upon the intent and design 
of the subject of it much more than upon the 
regularity of its form. Some of the oldest and 
ablest men of the Assembly expressed them- 
selves on one side or the other, very definitely : 
Dr. Beman warmly espousing the Majority Re- 
port ; Mr. Barnes and Dr. Spear the opposite. 
No conclusion was reached before the order of 
the day arrived, and it is therefore to come up 
again. 

*' Philadelphia, Tuesday, May 23, 1854. 

" The subject of Romish baptism came up 
again in the afternoon, and drew forth a few 
strong speeches. 



68 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

"Mr. Dobie read extracts from the Romish 
Catechism, to show the radical difference be- 
tween the baptism of that Church and the bap- 
tism of the New Testament. 

" Rev. Mr. Riley proposed to substitute a 
minute, dechiring the inexpedii;ncy of any action 
on the subject. [See his position on page 6G,] 

"Dr. Brainerd also thought it inexpedient to 
legislate on the subject. It was not good policy 
to do anything to estrange us from Catholics. 
To make a violent assault upon their rites or 
their character, as a Church, would be just what 
the priests of that Church would like. More- 
over, the subject is invested with great difficulty. 
If the validity of Catholic baptism be 

DENIED, then LuTHER AND CaLVIN, FKOM WHOM 

our baptism is derived, were unbaptized ; 
and to maintain our own standing in the 
Church, we must baptize the ashes of the 
Reformers ! ! Questions like this, involving 
matters of conscience, can not be settled by 
majorities. The discussion would do good, but 
tlie Assembly should be slow to legitdate. 

'' Rev. Mr. Clapp thought the adoption of the 
Majority Report — which declares the invalidity 
of Romish baptism — would lead to practical 
DIFFICULTY. What if the child of sincerely 
pious parents within the pale of the Catholic 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 69 

Church should present himself for admission to 
a Protestant Church ? To require his rebaptism 
would be to deny the faith and sincerity of his 
parents. He opposed any such declaration, be- 
cause the validity of any rite depends much 
more upon the intent and spirit of him who 
receives it than on the character of him who ad- 
ministers it; and because it w^ould be attachino^ 
too much importance to the form, and too little 
to the substance, of the ordinance. 

'^ Hon. Elisha Taylor, of Cleveland, strongly 
advocated the invalidity of Romish baptism. 
Baptism, as defined hj the New Testament, 

WAS AN INITIATORY ORDINANCE ; IF SO, IT COULD 
RIGHTFULLY BE PERFORMED ONLY BY THOSE 
BELONGING TO THE ChURCH INTO W^HICH IT AD- 
MITTED THE SUBJECT. The question was not as 
to the intent of the subject, but as to the au- 
thority of the administrator. A few years ago 
a company of infidels in New-York admitted 
their members by the rite of baptism, in derision 
of Christianity. What if any one had received 
this baptism innocently, and with good inten- 
tions, would it have been valid baptism ? The 
hierarchy of Rome were as corrupt and as hos- 
tile to true Christianity as this band of infidels ; 
and any principle which would admit the validity 
of their baptism would sanctify the mockery of 



70 THE tri-lemma; or, 

the infidels. He was for speaking out on the 
subject. There was quite too much disposition 
to trim and compromise for the sake of effect. 
This is no question of policy ; and if it were, he 
knew of no better policy than to declare the 
truth boldly. 

" Ilev. Mr. LeDoux repeated his opinion that 
the Romish Church was a true Church of Christ, 
though greatly corrupted. Any just definition 
of a Church would necessarily include the Rom- 
ish communion. 

^' Rev. Dr. Beman made a powerful speech in 
opposition to the Minority Report, in which 
logic and wit Avere finely intermingled. He 
divided the friends of tlie Minority Report into 
three strata — not intending, lie said, to imply by 
that term that they were fossils. The upper 
stratum believed in the genuine Christian char- 
acter of the Romish Church; they are opposed 
to telling the truth on the subject, because 
they did not believe it. The second stratum 
believed that baptism was valid by whomsoever 
administered — bv lavmen or women. The third 
believed in the prmciple of the Majority Report, 
but like the low^er strata in the physical world, 
were pressed down flat, and were for quiet. 
They were opposed to action in any shape, for 
policy's sake. These several classes were held 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 71 

up to ridicule, and reasoned against in a manner 
that kept up a lively interest. Dr. Beman has 
but few superiors as a debater. Deliberate, 
shrewd, witty, and unmerciful, he makes the 
worst kind of a foe ; and generally marches off 
the field in triumph, if not stained Avith the 
blood and brains of his adversaries. His speech 
on this occasion disclosed not a little of the 
vigor of his best days. 

" PhiladelpilXA, Tuesday, May 30. 

" The Presbyterian General Assembly (New 
School) adjourned sine die this afternoon. 

" The subject of Popish baptism was indefi- 
nitely postponed." 

Thus closed the discussion of this vexed ques- 
tion, to be brought up henceforth, not once in a 
dd««de of years, but yearly, if the query will b« 
entertained from their societies. 

The reader will see that it is one question that 
Protestants can not answer, and save their eccle- 
siastical existences. The General Assembly con- 
fessed itself in a c?tlemma, but we should say it 
was in a triAemma, Its dilemma was this : 

If it decided that baptisms, at the hands of the 
priests of Rome, are invalid^ then they would 



72 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

destroy their own baptisms, and those of all 
Protestant sects, because the fathers and found- 
ers, and all the first Pedobaptist ministers, re- 
ceived their baptisms in the corrupt Church of 
Rome, and at the hands of her priests. 

If they should decide that the baptisms of 
Romish priests are valid, they would also destroy 
the validity of their own, as well as those of all 
Protestants, because the General Assembly would 
thereby declare the Church of Rome to be a 
true Church of Christ visible ; which, if she is, 
Pedobaptist societies are scliismatics^ and excom- 
municated parties, and no Churches, and con- 
sequently their ministers are unordained, and 
unbaptized, and without authority either to 
preach or to baptize as Gospel ministers. So 
it is fatal to them, decide it either way. 

The Tn-lemma is the middle horn : the con- 
fession of the General Assembly of its inability 
to decide whether its own ministers are baptized, 
or have authority to baptize, and, consequently, 
whether their societies are visible Churches of 
Christ ! 

We should thinlvj for the General Assembly to 



DEATH BY THREE HOKNS. 78 

rest impaled upon this middle horn, would be as 
fata! as either of the others. 

What ! can not Presbyterian ministers, with 
all their boasted learning, decide among them- 
selves whether they have received Christian 
baptism? Can they not tell the world, when 
convened in their great Assembly, whether they 
be duly ordained and baptized ministers of Christ 
or not? Can they not tell the world whether 
their societies are visible Churches of Christ? 
Did Presbyterian ministers return from their 
General Assembly, and confess to their people 
that they were lost in thick darkness, not being 
able to decide whether they or their members 
were properly baptized, or members, in reality, 
of visible Churches ? This was their real situa- 
tion ; but we have not heard of one minister 
making such a confession to his people. Our 
impression is that all have agreed to keep their 
people in the dark about the whole matter. We 
have heard of their denying, stoutly, that such a 
question was ever mooted, and that the Assembly 
was unable to answer. We do not believe that 
one Presbyterian lay member, in one hundred, 
7 



74 THE tri-lemma; or, 

if one in one thousand, ever heard of it. They 
arc in the profoundest ignorance of the fatal 
•<n-lemma in which they are placed. 

Would it not have been the part of conscien 
tious Christian men, when they saw their situa- 
tion as Protestants, as they did see it in the 
light of the powerful discussions of that General 
Assembly, when they returned to their flocks, to 
have called them together, and frankly confessed 
the case to them, and told them : " You must 
excuse us from preaching longer to you as min- 
isfers^ or baptizing any more, or administering 
the Supper to you, for we can not see that we 
have authority to do so, having received only 
Romish baptisms, and you are not qualified to 
receive it, not being baptized by other than 
Romish priests, yourselves, indirectly. You 
must excuse us from all official duties until this 
vital question is settled?*' 

Now, when all these facts shall have been 
made known to Presbyterians, and to all Pedo- 
baptist sects, what should an intelligent and con- 
scientious membership do, but to wait upon their 
ministers, en masse, and say to them, '' Gentle- 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 75 

men, we have learned, through other sources 
than yourselves, that you have acknowledged 
yourselves unable to decide whether you are 
duly baptized and ordained ministers of the 
Church of Christ, visible ; unable to decide that 
we, your members, are baptized, or members, in 
fact, of a visible Church. That we have been 
deceived by j^ou, intentionally^ hitherto, we do 
not charge ; but you certainly do not wish to 
deceive henceforward, our children, and the 
world, intentionally, for you now see the posi- 
tion you occupy. Suspend your ministerial 
functions, preach no more as ministers, baptize 
no more, and introduce no more into our socie- 
ties as valid Churches, until this question is 
satisfactorily settled : Whether the baptisms of 
Romish priests are valid, or whether Pedobaptist 
ministers can administer more valid baptism 
than Roman Catholic priests ? '^ 

Ought not all the Presbyterian membership in 
this land to unite in one huge petition — instar 
moniis — of mountainous proportions, and roll it 
mto the presence of the next General Assembly, 
calling upon it to answer, if they and their 



76 THE tri-lexMMa; or, 

children have been baptized, and are really 
members of Christ's visible Church. 

What position should the public take — men of 
the world who are appealed to to support and 
attend upon the ministrations of Presbyterian 
and Pedobaptist ministers and " Churches ? '' 
Should they not say : " You must excuse us, if 
we withhold our usual support and countenance, 
until this, to us, very important question is, to 
our minds, satisfactorily answered. If you be 
only Romish priests in fact, having no better 
ordinances than they to give to our wives and 
our children, then we do not wish them to re- 
ceive ordinances at your hands. When vou in- 
troduce them into your societies, they honestly 
suppose they are members of the Church of 
Christ, w^hich your own General Assembly de- 
clares your societies are not, if the Romish 
Church is not a visible Church of Christ ; and, in 
fact, are much less Churches, if the Romish 
Church is now, or was, in the din^s of Luther, a 
Church of Christ visiule ! We have no use for 
the baptisms of Catholic priests, nor for the Ro- 
man Catholic Church as a religious body, and 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 77 

Wish purer ordinances for our families., whose 
guardians we are, and must therefore decline 
yours. 

Baptists need not be reminded of their duty 
in this case. Shall we be so kind as to step in 
and decide this matter for Presbyterians and 
Pedobaptists ? Shall we, by our acts^ say to 
them, and to tlie world that is watching us, we 
regard those men baptized and duly-ordained 
ministers in true Churches of Christ? Do we 
believe they have received valid baptism? Do 
we believe that their societies, originated and set 
up, not by the God of heaven, built, not by 
Christ, but by Luther, and Calvin, and Wesley, 
are Scriptural Churches, or Christian Churches 
in any sense? Do we believe it, or believe that 
their ministers possess the proper qualifications to 
carry out the commission of the Son of God — 
I. e.j preach, baptize, administer the Supper, etc. ? 
Baptists do not. No intelligent and true Baptist 
can ; and therefore they can not say so by their 
acts — associating with them as Avith properly- 
qualified ministers of Christ. If they preached 
the faith, in all respects, that was once delivered 

7* 



78 THE TIII-LEMMA ; OR, 

to the saints, we could not treat them as men 
qualified to preach as Christ's ministers; and 
how much less when we believe that they preach 
contrary to, and in subversion of the doctrines 
and ordinances of Christ, and would, if left 
alone, in one generation, obliterate from the 
w^orld the last trace of the Church he establislied. 
Their oro^anizations are rivals a2!;ainst the Church 
Christ set up, and their teaching is another gos- 
pel ; and from all such, though they be angels 
from heaven, we are to withdraw — are to have 
no company w^ith them, that they may be re- 
proved and ashamed, and the world be warned. 

How Presbyterian ministers, or members who 
have a knowledge of these facts, can presume, 
in the face of these things, to demand of Bap- 
tists to recognize and treat them as ministers, 
by inviting them into our pulpits to preach, as 
we only do qualified ministers, and to commune 
with them as baptized persons, and to acknowl- 
edge and treat them as evangelical Churches, ia 
passing strange to us ! 

They all saj their creeds and confessions 
teach that none are entitled to the Lord's Sup- 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 79 

per, or ought to be invited to partake of it, un* 
less duly baptized ; if there is any doubt about 
the matter, the Supper should not be offered 
until the doubt was removed ; and yet, they 
confess to us, through their General Assembly, 
that they can not tell whether they, themselves, 
any one of them, have been duly baptized ; ay, 
more, confess that they are not baptized, having 
received their baptisms from the Man of Sin and 
the Mother of Harlots. 

We think that the action of the General As- 
sembly forever settles the vexed question of open 
communion. 

Anabaptists never did commune with Rome, 
or those who received her baptisms. The Bap- 
tists of to-day are the descendants of the Ana- 
baptists w^ho have, for so many centuries, wit- 
nessed for Christ, against the corruptions of 
Antichrist. 

We leave the question with the Protestants of 
this age to answer, if they can, and preserve 
their ecclesiastical existences : 

Are THE Baptisms of the Papal Hierarchy 
Valid Baptisms. 



80 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 



CHAPTER IV. 



TWO OTHER QUESTIONS. 



Can Protestants oppose the Papacy without being slain by 
the Papacy ? Can Baptists oppose the Papacy without de- 
stroying Protestants ? 



\W) 



TAKE the negative of both questions. 
How can two unite to war, except they be 
agreed? They are violently antagonistic. 
They hate each other with a cruel hatred, 
scarcely less than they differ from and hate 
Baptists. Episcopalians are opposed by Presby- 
terians and Methodists ; while Episcopalians and 
Presbyterians unite in making war upon Metho- 
dists. Old and New School Presbyterians and 
Cono;rec!;ationalists are each seekino; the overthrow 
and annihilation of the other, and still, like Pilate 
and Herod, they will all unite in a league of 
auiity and friendship, to oppose the influence 
of Baptists, either in seeking the salvation of 
sinners, or the dissemination of their principles. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 81 

Talk about all these uniting in open communion 
at the Lord's table, in token of Church and 
Christian fellowship ! What impious hypocrisy, 
what a solemn mockery — a blasphemous farce, to 
thus prostitute the holy emblems to the propa- 
gation of di falsehood f We say Protestants are 
engaged in a fierce and deadly conflict among 
themselves, to annihilate each other; how, then, 
can they unite against Popery? 

But could they unite, wherein can they judge 
the Catholics, without condemning, also, them- 
selves? What principle of Papacy, save that 
of idolatry, can they attack without their blows 
recoiling most fearfully upon their own systems 
and practices? 

r. Will they deny that the Roman Catholic 
Church is a Scriptural Church, and denounce 
her as the ^^ Mystery of Iniquity,^' '^ The Wo- 
man dressed in scarlet, the Mother of Harlots 
and abominations of the earth f^^ 

Can not Rome justly say : ^^ Spare me, my dear 
children, and honor your mother, if you would 
be respected. Do you not all call yourselves 
Protestants and Reformed ? You then admit 



82 THE TRI-LEMMA; OR, 

yourselves once to have been a part of myself y 
and to have proceeded forth from me ! Do you 
not, to-day, call yourselves ' branches of the 
Church ? ^ Of what Church are you branches, 
but of the HoLtyRoman Catholic, in which you 
all acknowledge you originated, and from which, 
as a branch from a parent trunk, you confess- 
edly proceed ? If I, the Catholic Church, am 
the mother of ' harlotSy and ' abominations ^ of 
the earth, you are all my children^ and conse- 
quently are those very harlots and abomi- 
nations! You do not well, my daughters, 
thus to cast reproach upon your parentage. I 
commend to you the example and filialness of 
your sister, my favorite child, the Episcopal 
Church, which, like a prodigal, is returning to 
her mother^s house/^ 

Could not Rome thus cause the well-aimed 
blow to recoil upon her Protestant children,* for 
they are her legitimate offspring; and if she is 
the mother of abominations and harlots, Protest- 

"*' Baptists are not Protestants, having never belonged to 
the Catholic Church, more than to-dav. ''Baptists/' said 
Sir Isaac Newton, " are the only people that never sym- 
bolized with Popery." 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 83 

ants are they. If the fountain is corrupt, all 
the waters that flow from it are also corrupt. 
If the(>hurch of Rome is an illegitimate Church, 
they are illegitimate Churches also. " Either 
make the tree good, and its fruit good, or else 
make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt'^ — 
(Matt, vii : 23) — is a principle established by 
the Great Teacher. ^ 

2. Will they deny her the age she claims — 
that she was founded by Peter ^ and once pre- 
sided over by him and preserved against the 
gates of hell f 

They must do this, else Rome stands forth a 
Christian and aj)ostolic Church, and besides her 
there is none other. But they deny her claims, 
and charge her with being, from the days of 
Paul, that spirit of Antichrist that w^orked in 
the early Churches, corrupting Christianity; 
that it was early repudiated by all the pure 
Churches; that Popery had no existence in its 
present form until established by Ililderbrand, 
A. D. GOG ; that no Church, similar to the Ro- 
man Catholic, was instituted by Christ or his 
apostles, or existed within six hundred years of 



84 THE TRI-LEMMA; OR, 

their day; and, moreover, all the teachings of 
the Scriptures positively forbid the idea of such 
a monstrous system. 

Can not Rome reply, " My dear children, do 
you not see that you commit suicide by taking 
such a position to discredit my claims ! You 
can not, with the least regard to reason, believe 
that such systems as yours existed in the days 
of the Apostles, surely, each radically differing 
from, and destructive of, the other ! Did Paul 
found an Episcopal Church at Antioch, a Pres- 
byterian Church at Ephesus, and a Methodist 
one at Philippi? Certainly not. All the 
Churches that were founded in the ApostW 
times, were one and identical in doctrine, in or- 
ganization, ordinances, and practices. But you 
do not even claim that you existed in the days 
of the Apostles, or were founded by them. I 
know the parentage of each of you, and beheld 
you when you icere born. You, my most dutiful 
Church of England, are the offspring of my 
wayward and licentious boy, Henry YIII., who 
was led astray by the love of the beautiful Ann 
Boleyn, A. D. 1534. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 85 

" You^ my Lutheran daughter^ by the bold 
and impetuous Martin Luther, A. D. 1525. 

" You, my Presbyterian daughter, by the 
stern and austere Calvin, A. D. 1541 ; while 
I acknowledge you, dear Methodists, being all 
the children of Wesley, by the Church of En- 
•gland (A, D. 1784), as my legitimate and wortliy 
grandchildren , and though quite too noisy and 
fanatical, yet I can not but be quite partial to 
you, since, next to your mother, the Church of 
England, you possess nearly all my features; 
indeed, the likeness is striking and remarkable ! '' 

3. Will Protestants charge the Church of 
Rome loith being ^^ mystical Bab(jlon,^^ and that 
'^ scarlet woman^^ drunken with the blood of the 
saints f 

May not Rome reply : ^^ If I am Babylon, 
because I have persecuted and shed the blood 
of the heretical Anabaptists, then do you also 
belong to Babylon, for which one of you all 
liave not imbued your hands in their blood? 
Your own garments are scarlet and blood- 
dyed, as well as my own ! It becomes us 
to keep these family matters among ourselves, 



86 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

and not charM each other before our ene- 



&^ 



4. Will Protestants denounce Rome for the 
iniquitous and blasphemous assumptions of her 
clergy of the '^ Divine riglit^^ to legislate for the 
Church of Christ, to make, change, or abolish, 
rites and ceremonies, etcJ 

Do not Protestants claim the same Anti- 
CHRISTIAN POWERS ? See Methodist Discipline, 
Art. xxii: ^^ Every particular Church may or- 
dain, change, or abolish rites and ceremonies, so 
that all things be done to edification '^ — of 
whom? The rulers or the judges, of course. 
They, then, claim to ordain or institute, change 
and abolish until they are themselves perfectly 
suited, pleased, and satisfied ! Is not this 
claiming Antichristian potcers ? Does the Pope 
claim more power? 

Calvin says: ^^From the beginning the 
Church has freely allowed herself, excepting the 
substance, to have rites a little dissimilar, for 

•••Read Rev. xviii : 24; ''The blood of all the saints is 
to be found in Babylon." If Protestant sects have shed 
the blood of saints, are they not a part of mystical BaUj- 
Ion? 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 87 

some immerse thrice, and others only once;^' 
and he therefore abolished immersion altogether, 
as inconvenient, and ordained sprinkling in the 
room of Christ^s appointment. He had as good 
a right to have forbidden baptism entirely, as to 
change its action in the least. He did abolish 
Christian baptism, and substituted clerical bap- 
tism instead of it. 

5. Will Protestants declare before the worldy 
that the ordinances administered by the Priests 
of Pome are invalid, since Rome is no Church, 
but Antichrist, and her priests therefore the 
ministers of Antichrist ! 

Can not Rome reply : " It is quite unfortu- 
nate for you to say so, since you unbaptize 
Luther and Calvin, and all your first ministers, 
and thereby acknowledge yourselves unbaptized, 
and without authority to baptize. If you are 
not concerned for my honor, you should be for 
that of those whom you boast of as your eccle- 
siastical fathers and founders. The less you say 
about my baptisms and ordinances the better.^^ 

[Presbyterian to Episcopalian, aside : ^^It 
would be as fatal to us to admit her tg be the 



88 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

true Church of Christ ; for, if so, all we Protest- 
ants are evidently schismatics and heretics, and 
we have been excommunicated from, and anathe- 
matized by, her; and, therefore, if she is a true 
Church we are no Churches, but in rebellion to 
Christ What shall we sayf^ 

The dilemma presented by the Archbishop of 
York to the British Parliament, early as 1558, 
vaunting itself upon its orthodoxy and succes- 
sion apostolic, is worthy of special attention just 
here, and it will show that Presbyterians are 
not alone between two horns, and impaled upon 
a third ! Here it is : 

^^ The Romish Church is either a true Church, 
or a false one. 

''If true, then the Church of England — we may 
add, all, Protestants and Reformed Churches, 
are schismatics, and have been excommunicated. 

^' 1{ false, then the English Episcopal clergy, 
and all Protestant ministers, have false orders, 
are unordained, and Avithout authority to ad- 
minister the ordinances.'^ 

The Parliament heard this with no little vexa- 
tion, saw the fatal dilemma in which Protestants 



DEATH BY THREE HOKNS. 89 

were placed, bui could not make an election of 
its horns. It left the question undecided, and 
left the Romish priests to enjoy a decided 
triumph. That victory Rome can ever win in 
conflict with her children. 

Hxjw can Baptists deny the validity of the or- 
dinances of the Romish Church, without thereby 
destroying Protestant baptisms and ordinations ? 

6. Will Protestants protest against the un- 
scriptural orders of the Catholic clergy^ since 
Christ made all his ministers equal, and only 
one order? 

But the advocates of Episcopacy, whether 
Protestant or Methodist, have their three orders 
at least, and their inferior and superior min- 
isters. 

7. Will they protest against the irreligious 
practice of the inferior Catholic clergy , of being 
solemnly sworn to ohey reverently in all things 
the superior clergy ? 

The Methodist and Episcopal inferior clergy 
are compelled to do the same thing ! ^ee Office 
for Ordination of Beacons dnd Elders in their 

Prayer Book and Discipline. Here is the oatb 

8* 



90 THE tri-leMxMa; or, 

Catholic Priests are bound to take before they 
are empoAvered by the Pope, or their chief min- 
•isters, to administer the sacrament of the Church : 

THE OATH OF A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST. 

" I. N., elect of the Church of N., from hence- 
forward, will be faithful and obedient to St. 
Peter, the Apostle, and to the holy Roman 
Church, and to our Lord, the Lord N., and to hi? 
successors canonically coming in. I will neither 
advise, consent, nor do anything that they 
may lose life or member, or that their persons 
may be seized, or hands anywise laid upon them 
or any injuries offered to them, under any pre- 
tense whatsoever. The counsel which they shall 
intrust me withal, by tliemselves, their messengers 
or letters, I will not, knowingly, reveal to any 
to their prejudice. I will help them to defend 
and keep the Roman Papacy, and the royalties 
of St. Peter, saving my order against all men. 
The Legate of the Apostolic See going and 
coming, I will honorably treat and help in his 
necessities. The rights, honors, privileges, and 
authority of the holy Roman Church, of OUR 
Lord the Pope, and his aforesaid successors, I 
<vill endeavor to preserve, defend, increase, and 
advance. I will not be in any council, action, 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 91 

or treaty, in which shall be plotted against our 
said Lord and the said Roman Church, anvthinoj 
to the hurt or prejudice of their persons, right, 
honor, state, or power ; and if I shall know any 
such thing to be treated or agitated by any 
whatsoever, I will hinder it to the extent of my 
power, and, as soon as I can, will signify it to 
our said Lord, or to some other, by whom it 
may come to his knowledge. The rules of the 
holy fathers, the apostolic decrees, ordinances, 
or disposals, reservations, provisions, and man- 
dates, I will observe with all my might, and 
cause to be observed by others. Heretics, 
schismatics, and rebels to our said Lord, or his 
aforesaid successors, I wall, to the extent of my 
power, persecute and oppose." 

THE OATH OF AN EPISCOPALIAN OR METHODIST 
MINISTER TO HIS PRESIDING ELDERS AND 
BISHOP. 

^'The bishop reads: 'And now that this 
present congregation of Christ here assembled 
may also understand your minds and wills in 
these things, and that this your promise may 
the more move you to do your duties, ye shall 
answer plainly to these things which we, in the 
NAME OF God and his Church, shall demand of 
you touching the same.'" 



92 THE tri-lemma; or, 

Is not this an oath ? Is it not a solemc 
ippeal to God? Is not this affirmation put in 
the name of God? It is then an oath. — {Se^ 
Webster^s Dictionary/,) 

The bishop then proceeds 

"The .Bishop: 'Will you reverently obey 
your chief ministers, unto whom is committed 
the charge and government over you ; following 
with a glad mind and will their godly admoni- 
tions, submitting yourself to their godly judg- 
ments?' 

"Ans: 'I will do so, the Lord being my 
helper!!''' 

Read it agc^in — is it not a mistake? Can 
such a solemn, awful oath fall from a professing 
Christian's, much less Christian minister's lips ? 
Read it : 

*' The Bishop says : ' Will you reverently 
obey your nhief ministers, unto whom is com- 
mitted the CHARGE and government over you; 

f'OLLOWING WITH A GLAD MIND AND W^ILL THEIR 
GODLY ADMONITIONS, SUBMITTING YOURSELVES TO 
THEIR GODLY JUDGMENTS.' 

" Answer of the elder : ' I will so do, the 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 93 

Lord [forgive the poor deluded soul] being my 
helper! !^^^ 

Blessed Savior ! and can this be the language 
of one of thy ministers — of a Protestant Chris- 
tian freeman, in the nineteenth century ? And 
didst thou not most solemnly command tliy dis- 
ciples to acknowledge no master — no lawgiver, 
but thyself; and to teach only what thou hast 
enjoined upon them? And do they not here, 
as do the ministers of Antichrist, solemnly vow 
to take self-appointed lordlings for their mas- 
ters, in all things, regardless of what thou hast 
commanded — and that so fully, so absolutely, as 
to exercise no judgment or will of their own in 
reserving any liberty to consult thy will? 

Is not this a more stringent oath than the 
Catholic priests take to obey and do the bidding 
of their Pope ? Does it not positively deprive 
one of the exercise of any mind, or will, or 
judgment of his own? Does it not reduce the 
Methodist circuit-rider and elder to a mere pas- 
sive tool, blindly subservient to the will and wishes 
of their ghostly superiors? Am I mistaken? 
Read under the duties of preachers, Rule 12, 



94 THE TRI-LEMMA; OR, 

which these Protestant ministers are especially 
asked if they have read and will observe : 

" 12th Rule. Act in all things, not according 
to your own will, but as a son (i. e., our serv- 
ant) in the Gospel I As such it is your duty 
to employ your time in the manner which WE 
direct in preaching and visiting from house to 
house, in reading, meditation, and prayer. 
ABOVE ALL, [hear it, O ye lieavens! and 
be astonished, O ye earth — hear it! above 
preaching the Gospel, reading God's AVord, 
obeying Christ, or even prayer; yes, above a/Z,] 
if you labor with us in the Lord's vineyard, it 
is needful that you should do that part of the 
work which WE advise, at those times and places 
which WE judge most for his glory ! ^^ 

Slavery — spiritual serfdom — what shall we 
say ? We have no language in which to express 
our feelings. W^ere an angel from heaven to 
presume to impose such a law upon a mortal, he 
would be thrust down to darkness in a moment ; 
and for a mortal — a poor fallen mortal — to de- 
mand service of his fellow ! 

If this is not a bold example and illustration 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 95 

of Antichrist, and the pretensions and blasphe- 
mous assumptions of the " Man of Sin/^ op- 
posing and exalting himself above all that is 
called God, or that is worshiped; so that he, as 
God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing him- 
self that he is God, the world has never yet 
beheld one ! 

Is not this an antichristian power, that 
makes implicit and se?*y//f^ obedience to its man- 
dates the first and most important duty: — the 
one above even the worship of God (prayer) 
and the reading or teaching his Word ! — ^to heed 
and obey the will of man more than the will of 
God ! This is setting man above God ! 

Can Baptists assail this principle of the 
Papacy Avithout incurring the displeasure of 
every minister of the Episcopal and Methodist 
hierarchies? 

8. Will they charge the' Catholics with blas- 
phemy for giving the titles that belong to God to 
the pontiff, and cardinals, and bishops? 

Are not Episcopalians and Methodists guilty 
of the same sin ? See the title given to the late 
Bishop Hedding, in the Methodist Preacher^ 



96 THE TIir-LEMMA; OR, 

(Introduction, page 1 :) " The Right Rever- 
end Father in God!'' This smacks of my 
Lord God the Pope. See titles of the Episco- 
pal clero^y. 

9. Will they object to the Pope because he 
claims the power of the keys ? 

The Protestant clergy claim each the same 
power ! Methodist bishops and elders claim it, 
and Presbyterian ministers and their elders ! 

For a full discussion of this, see the Letter 
on " Key Power^'^ page 247. 

10. Will Protestant sects attack the Catholics 
because they claim that the supreme visible 
headship is vested in the Pope of Rome^ since 
the visible Church has no earthly head? 

But they have each a head ! Queen Victoria 
and her parliament is the head of the Church 
of England, as Pio Nono and his bench of car- 
dinals is of the Catholic; the bishops and Gen 
eral Conference is the head of the Methodist 
society, and the General Assembly of Pres-» 
byterianism — all legislative bodies, I phould 
prefer one great, grand head to so many little 
heads ! 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 97 

11. Will Protestants object to Popery on the 
ground of her traditions ? 

They hold, teach, and practice her most per- 
nicious one — that has done Christianity more 
injury than all the other traditions of Popery 
together ! Infant baptism is a tradition of " the 
Church," as well as sprinkling and pourhig 
upon for baptism, and Catholics have never 
fiiiled to cast it into the teeth of Protestants, 
that while they protest against the authority ot 
the Romish Church, they practice one of her 
principal traditions. 

What says Dr. Pise, (a priest of the Romish 
Church, and of high standing .among that order 
in New York, second, perhaps, to none but 
Bishop Hughes,) in a lecture recently delivered 
in New York : " There are many things believed 
by all Christians at the present day, not to bo 
found in the Scriptures. This is true with 
regard to infant baptism, that we and all Chris- 
tians (Pedobaptist) believe in, for there is no 
authority for it in Scripture. We nowhere find 
that the apostles baptized infants, and if it be 
proper and necessary to baptize infants as well 
9 



98 THE TRI-LEMiMA ; OH, 

as adults, we have no other authority, and MUST 

DEPEND ENTIRELY ON TRADITION^ of the Church 

of Rome, of course. 

I add to this the highest Roman Catholic 
authority in the world, that of Mons. Bossuet, 
Bishop of Meaux,, who was preceptor to one of 
the kings of France, and the frank concession to 
that authority by the learned Mons. de la Roque, 
pastor of a Reformed Church at Rouen, in Nor- 
mandy, who was engaged in controversy with 
Bishop Bossuet. Bossuet says : 

" In fine, we read not in the Scripture that 
baptism was otherwise administered, [than by 
immersion ;] and we are able to make it appear 
by the acts of councils, and by the ancient 
rituals, that for thirteen hundred years baptism 
was thus administered throughout the whole 
Church, as far as was possible. 

'' Though these are incontestable truths, yet 
neither we [Catholics] nor those of the pretended 
Reformed religion hearken to the Anabaptists, 
who hold mersion to be essential and indispen- 
sable ; nor have either they [Protestants] or we 
[Catholics] feared to change this dipping (as I 
may say) of the whole body, into a bare asper- 
sion or infusion on one part of it. No other 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 99 

reason of- this alteration can be rendered than 
that this dipping is not of the substance of bap- 
tism ; and those of the pretended Reformed 
religion agreeing with us in this, the first prin- 
ciple we have laid down is incontestable." . 

And in another place : 

"Jesus Christ (says he) has ordered to dip^ 
as we have often observed. We have also taken 
notice, that he w^as baptized in this form, that 
his apostles practiced it, and that it was con- 
tinued in the Church down to the twelfth and 
thirteenth ages ; and yet baptism given only by 
infusion [sprinkling or pouring] is admitted, 
without any difficulty, on the sole authority of 
the Church." 

"Experience has shown that all the attempts 
of the Reformed to confound the Anabaptists by 
the Scripture, have been weak ; and therefore 
they are at last obliged to allege to them tlie 
practice of the Church. Vf e see in their Disci- 
pline, at the end of the eleventh chapter, the 
form of receiving adult persons into their com- 
munion, where they make the proselyted Ana- 
baptist acknowledge that the baptism of infants 
is founded on Scripture and on the j^f^^yetual 
practice of the Church ! When the pretended 
lleformed believe they have the word of God 



100 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

very expressly on their side, they are not wont 
to buihl on the perpetujil practice of the Church. 
But in this case, because the Scripture furnishes 
them with nothing by which they are able to stop 
the mouths of the Anabaptists, it was necessary 
to rely on somewhat else, and at the same time 
to confess that in these matters the pei'petual 
practice of the Church is of inviolable au- 
thority." 

What reply did the Reformed pastor make to 
this authority? Did he deny that Christ com- 
manded his disciples to immerse, and not to 
sprinkle ? Did he deny that it had been the 
practice of thirteen centuries ? Did he deny 
that the Romish Church had, upon her sole 
authority, changed the action into sprinkling? 
No ; he denies not one of the above statements, 
but frankly admits every one of them, and 
charges the Romish Church with having cor- 
rupted the ordinances by so doing. 

He repeats at length what the bishop urges 
ao;ainst the Protestants concerning; the chano;c 
of dipping into sprinkling^ etc., in wh^ch they 
agree with those of the Romish Churcli, and then 
answers in the fullowino:: terms : 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 101 

^' I was willing (says he) to report the whole 
passage of Mons. Bossuet, to elucidate this 
matter to the Protestants, who scarce ever make 
any reflection on it. It is true that the greatest 
part of them hitherto baptize only by sprinkling^ 
but it is certainly an abuse ; and this practice, 
which they have retained from the Romisli 
Church without a due examination of it, as well 
as many other things which they still retain, 
renders their baptism very defective. It corrupts 
both the institution and ancient usage of it, and 
the relation it ought to have to faith, repentance, 
and regeneration. Mons. Bossuet's remark, that 
dipping was in use for thirteen hundred years, 
deserves our serious consideration, and our ac- 
knowledgment thereupon, that we have not suf- 
ficiently examined all that we have retained from 
the Romish Church; that seeing her most learned 
prelates now inform us that it was she that first 
abolished a usage authorized by so many strong 
reasons, and by so many ages, she has done 
very ill on this occasion, and that we are obliged 
to return to the ancient practice of the Church, 
and to the institution of Jesus Christ. I do not 
say that baptism by aspersion is null — that is 
not my opinion ; but it must be confessed, if 
sprinkling destroys not the substance of baptism, 
yet it alters it, and in some sort corrupts it — it 



102 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

IS a defect which spoils its lawful form." — Sten- 
neCs Answer to Hussen^ p. 18G. 

I have quoted this to give a practical illus- 
tration of how utterly'impossible it is for Pedo- 
baptists to meet the Papists. The old mother 
has every conceivable advantage. 

12. Will they denounce Popery for its oppo- 
sition to the circulation of the pure word of God^ 
so that every man may have every word of the 
" Word of Life " faithfully translated into his 
own language .^ 

Protestants, as sects, are bitterly opposed to 
the purest possible version in all languages and 
tongues, and, indeed, to-day, are giving a pure 
version to no nation of earth ! Did they not 
refuse to circulate the version made by Dr. Jud- 
son, because it translated every ^vord ? 

13. Is 7iot Popery an absolute and tyrannical 
hierarchy^ oppressive to liuvianity^ hostile to its 
bed interests J and, in its influence^ opjjosed to, 
and destructive of all free institutions, as of 
civil and religious liberty ? 

It is manifest to all that the leading Protest- 
ant sects are hierarchies, or despotic aristocra- 



DjSath by three horns. 103 

cies also, since the people are denied all voice 
in the administration of government, and the 
authority, legislative and executive, is placed 
in the hands of a few. It is a fixed fact, and 
easy of clearest demonstration^ that hierarcJiial 
ftnd aristocratic Church organizations are hostile 
in their influence to republican institutions ; 
that they insensibly prepare the rising genera- 
tion to favor, if not to seek, a civil government 
of the same character. It is admitted that 
nothing is more dangerous than a religious 
hierarchy or monarchy in a republic. Is the 
Roman hierarchy dangerous, and are the Prot- 
estant hierarchies less so ? It is the principle^ 
not the name; for a hierarchy is subversive of 
religious freedom, in whose hands soever it 
may be. 

Lutheranism in the hands of Luther was op- 
posed to civil and religious liberty, and he 
united his ^'Church" to the State in adulterous 
union, and it has been from then until now a 
persecuting power. Presbyterianism in the 
hands of Calvin burned Servetiis in a slow fire 
of green wood, and drove, by fines, imprison* 



104 THE tpvI-lemma; or, 

merits, and tortures, the Baptists from the Can- 
ton of Geneva. 

Episeopalianism is black and bloody with 
the murders of the martyrs of Jesus. Smith- 
field will witness against her in the judgment 
of nations that will come. (See Matt, xxiv.) 
Puritanism and Presbyterianism in New Eng- 
land, and the Episcopacy in ^Virginia and 
Georgia made manifest their opposition to re- 
ligious freedom, in the bloody acts they com- 
mitted in their mad attempts to crush it out, 
and prevent its gaining a foothold on these 
shores. All these are to-day opposed to free 
religious discussion by the pulpit and the press. 

The time is not far distant when Protestant 
hierarchies will be repudiated by all Christians, 
as the Papal is to-day. 

14. . Will Protestants cliarge upon CatJio- 
lies that tliey recognize and svpport the aduU 
terous union of Church and State^ telling them 
that the Church of Christ " is not of this world f 

Rome could reply : " You, my daughters, have 
committed harlotry and made yourselves the 
^abominations of the earth' by the same act. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 105 

Where have you had the power, and have not 
united the State to j^our Churches? Have not 
Episcopalians done so in England, and all her 
colonies, and did they not retain the union in 
America so long as possible? Have not the 
Presbyterians in Scotland, and in all the con- 
tinental kingdoms of Europe, as well as Luther- 
ans, and did they not do the same thing in the 
American colonies ? " 

15. Will Protestants denounce Home because 
she denies the supremacy of the Word of Grod, 
placing as she does, the decisions of her councils 
and of her j^ontiffs before it, for the observance 
of her people ? 

Can not Rome point the Episcopalians to their 
head — the reigning king, or even woman, and the 
Parliament of England, Presbyterians to their 
General Assemblies, and Methodists to their 
College of Bishops and General Conferences, 
to whose decisions they are all compelled to bow 
implicitly or be excommunicated ? 

16. Will Protestants charge the Papacy ivith 
denying that doctrine pjrofessedly so sacred to 
Pedobaptisfs — the all-sufficiency of the Word 



106 THE TRI-LExMMA ; OR, 

of God for faith and practice? — the Bible 
and the Bible alone, for all religious doctrines 
and duties? 

Can not Rome point to their Books of Com- 
mon Prayer, Rubrics, etc.. Confession of Faith, 
and authenticated Disciplines, that in every 
Protestant meeting-house are placed either on 
top of the Bible or by its side, but in every case 
the first required to be observed by Protestants. 
If the laws, and traditions, and ".rules" enjoined 
by their elders and "chief ministers" on them 
are not observed, the guilty protestant is cast 
out of the Church of Christ — if these organiza- 
tions can be so considered. Does Rome do 
Averse? 

17. Will Protestants assail the Bapacy for 
suueeping away the great fundamental vital doc- 
trine of individualism, upon which all true Chris- 
tianity rests, because she forbids by pains and 
penalties personal religious liberty, and freedom 
of the conscience, and forces upon her infantile^ 
unconscious subjects, oyieroiis rites, Church 
ordinances, and religious obligations, and even 
salvation, tvithout either faith or voluntariness^ 
on their part. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 107 

Would not Rome reply : " Whenever you judgo 
me on this you condemn j^ourselves. You have 
imitated my example and adopted the very rite 
which I originated, by which to accomplish these 
very results, that I might the more easily and 
successfully extend my authority over the hearts 
and consciences of men. Were it now in your 
power as it has been, to carry out your princi- 
ples, you would not only as thoroughly destroy 
the pure doctrine of personal religion, but con- 
strain religious freedom and liberty of conscience, 
by 'pains and penalties,' as you have done. 
But you are more inconsistent than I am. While 
you teach the doctrine of total hereditary de- 
pravity in your Creed, j^ou deny it in your 
Ritual, (for the baptism of infants,) and while 
you deny in your Creed the possibility of the 
apostasy from grace of a saint or the elect, you 
deny it in your Discipline." I give Rome the 
advantage of an extract from an able review of 
New Endand Puritanism :* 

"And we can not refuse to see that as per- 

* Christian Review, No. 66. 



108 THE tri-lemma; or, 

secution ^vas a settled element of their policj^ 
so it was the natural outgrowth of their princi- 
ples. Infant baptism is in its very idea opposed 
to individualism. It nips religious liberty in the 
very bud. It blasts it in the xerj germ. It 
extirpates it at the very root. It begins by in- 
stituting sponsors for the faith of the child. It 
anticipates his birth, and by some mysterious 
process marries on the spiritual life of the child 
to the spiritual life of his progenitors. It does 
not leave him the poor privilege of being born 
in original sin. If, with the pious old lady, he 
should ever come to the conclusion that if he 
lost his total depravity, he Avould lose all his 
religion, his case w^ould be hopeless. He can 
neither believe nor disbelieve for himself. 
When he growls up to moral consciousness and 
the period of moral responsibility, he finds, by 
some spiritual legerdemain, by some mysterious 
law of hereditary transmission, that responsi- 
bility shifted to another, and a corresponding 
disposition of his outward relations. While yet 
unborn, linked with his believing parent, he was 
safely infolded in the bosom of the covenant, 
and as soon as born has been snugly sheltered 
in the bosom of the Church. In unconscious 
infancy the vows of the Church have been laid 
upon him ; the sacred obligations of the Chris- 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 109 

tian profession assumed in his behalf. He can 
not quit the Church to which he has been at- 
tached in infancy, or remain aloof from it, 
without a forcible sundering of bands which 
have been cast around him. He can not think 
for liimself witliout being;: liable to be dealt with 
for heresy. He can not act for himself without 
being liable to be dealt with for contumacy. 
The Church has thrown her arms around him 
and she claims him as her own. ' That chil- 
dren, by baptism,' so runs the Westminster 
Declaration, approved by the General Assembly 
of Scotland, 'are solemnly received into the 
bosom of the visible Church, distinguished from 
the world, and them that are without, and united 
with believers ; and that all who are baptized 
in the name of Christ do renounce, and by their 
baptism are bound to fight against the devil, 
the world, and the flesh ; that they are Chris- 
tians and federally holy before baptism, and 
therefore, they are baptized; that the inward 
grace and virtue of baptism 13 not tied to that 
ver}' moment of time wliei-ein it is administered, 
and that the fruit and power thereof reacheth 
to the whole course of our life.' Ah, could the 
ordinance but realize these professions made in 
its behalf! Could the holy water sprinkled on 

the brow, and the holy name uttered over it, 
10 



110 . THE TRI-LEMMA ; OK, 

really prove the talisman ^vliicli it claims to be 
against the baleful workings of the great Foe — 
the enemy more potent and terrible than Death ! 
But 

'''Alas! Leviathan is not so tamed/ 

and he mocks at the impotent weapon which 
recoils from his dracpon-scalcs. 

'' Now that the principle of voluntariness in re- 
ligion is thus cut up at the root, that for it the 
principle of coercion is substituted, is self-evi- 
dent. The man is bound to the Church by 
obligations laid upon him when he was yet un- 
conscious, and knew neither good nor evil. And 
the Church havino; besrun her work must finish 
it. Him whom she has brought under her dis- 
cipline she must subject to her discipline ; and 
as many may be disposed to break away and 
ignore the authority thus assumed over them, 
she must look around for some means of en- 
forcing her claims. Her natural, her only ap- 
peal is to the arm of the civil magistrate, and 
her first business is, therefore, to put herself in 
alliance with the State. 

" And here another principle comes in to her 
aid. The doctrine is that the child of the be 
liever is born a Christian, and that because ht 
is a Christian he is baptized and is a genuine 



DEATH BY THREE HOKNS. Ill 

member of the Church. Assume now that tliia 
is no idle parade of Avords, but a doctrine 
honestly believed and acted upon. The inevit- 
able consequence follows. Once a Christian 
always a Christian, is true both for himself and 
his descendants ' to the last syllable of recorded 
time.' Piety and Church membership both be- 
come hereditary, and spread themselves by fixed 
and certain laws through all the ramifications, 
and to every individual, of the race of the godly. 
By necessary consequence, then, individual 
Christianity is lost in family Christianity, and 
the religion of the family soon merges into the 
religion of the State. Why should it not ? 
Church' and State become coincident in territory 
and population. The members of the State are 
all members of the Church, and it may well be- 
hoove them to devolve on some one, and on 
whom more appropriately than on the civil 
magistrate, the charge of seeing that none are 
derelict in duty; that no child is allowed, through 
the remissness of his parents, to lose the benefits 
of a rite whose consequences are so momentous, 
nor when grown up, to shake oflF the yoke of 
obligation whichthe watchful benevolence of the 
Church has placed upon his infant neck. 

" Such, logically, such in fact, was New Eng- 
land Congregationalism. It broke oflF. from a 



112 THE tri-lemma; or, 

national Church which it did not like, to coino 
over the seas and found a national Church which 
it did like. On the soil on which it had set its 
foot it planted the banner of unlimited dominion. 
Its parishes were territorial parishes. Its 
Churches were territorial Churches. It cLaimcd 
the fealty of every soul born within its limits. 
The civil magistrate was but the instrument of 
the spiritual power, and dissent from the recog- 
nized modes of woi'ship was punished as alike 
disobedience to God and rebellion against the 
State. 

"Just as little is it accidental that Baptists 
have been the uniform advocates of religious 
freedom, and that single-handed they have 
fought the battle against the banded sentiment 
of Christendom. It flows necessarily from their 
first principle. Their doctrine of individualism — 
of personal faith and voluntary baptism — draws 
along with it as with the sweep of a cataract, 
the absolute repudiation of all State interference 
between the conscience and its God. The claim 
of the civil power to coerce men into religious 
faith and union with the Church, becomes a 
grand impertinence — only not utterly ridiculous, 
because audaciously wicked. To his own master 
each one standeth or falleth. He is in imme- 
diate, untransferable, inviolable relations to God, 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 113 

and neither man nor angel can wrest from him 
the privilege, nor lift from him the obligation of 
his high spiritual prerogative. By a logical ne- 
cessity, therefore — by every principle and the 
whole spirit of his system, every Baptist is com- 
mitted to the advocacy of religious liberty. And 
by a necessity equally strong, every consistent Pe- 
dobaptist is committed against it [as fully as the 
Papist.] Innocent as infant baptism seems, as 
slight a thing as it appears to lay the conse- 
crating hand on the brow of the unconscious 
babe, and utter over it the sacred formula, it is 
in fact a thing of wondrous potency. If it has 
not precisely the consequences which the Con- 
fession assigns to it, it has others scarcely less 
far-reaching, and of less questionable reality. 
Its tendency is to invite the world into the 
arms of the Church and then to throttle the 
Church in the embrace of the world. It has thus 
linked itself with spiritual despotism, and is at 
this moment in Europe the strong bond of alli- 
ance between the Church and the State. 

''Nor can we fail to remark how utterly dis- 
cordant is the doctrine on which infant baptism 
rests, with the spirit of Calvinism. An especial 
characteristic of the system of Calvin is its 
assertion of original depravity, and of our ab- 
solute dependence for moral purity on regener- 
10* 



114 THE tri-lemma; or, 

ating grace. How these two doctrines- -an 
absolute heirdom of wrath, and inherited Church 
membership — can ' dwell together in unity/ it 
is impossible to discover. They are irreconcil- 
ably hostile. Like two distinct races dwelling 
together on the same soil, one must hold its 
ground at the expense of the other. In New 
England's early history the hereditary principle 
prevailed. Religion, therefore, rapidly declined 
from its purity. The Church was inundated by 
the world — by men Avho had no sympathy with 
its vital doctrines ; to w^hom the cross Avas a 
stumbling-block, and evangelical religion foolish- 
ness. Hence, the Church lay cold and dead in 
the arms of her baptized enemies, until the 
Great Revival awoke her slumbering life. 
Since then, in that portion of the Church which 
did not renounce evangelical doctrines and faith, 
the Calvin istic element has been in the ascend- 
ant, and infant baptism has shrunk into little more 
than a ceremony, a form of dedication by which 
the parent seeks to deepen his own sense of 
responsibility, and secure he knows not what 
spiritual benefit to his offspring.'' 

I could continue this list of principles, in 
common Avith Protestants and Papists, to doublo 
tho number, were it necessary ; but these are 



DEATH BY THREE IIOKNS. 115 

sufficient for my purpose, to show that the Ref- 
ormation must be radically reformed^ and Prot- 
estantism itself protested against, before it can 
successfully grapple with the Papacy, or deserve 
to receive the countenance of republican-loving 
American Christians. 

We also see the unfortunate antagonism 
with all the Protestant sects, into which we, as 
Baptists, are brought whenever we attack the 
^principles of the Papacy ! Our blows break their 
force upon Protestants; and Catholic priests 
smile in security behind them, as behind a 
bulwark. We can only reach Romanists through 
Protestants, for they are intrenched behind them. 
Their priests the more securely keep them in 
darkness by directing their attention to the fact 
that Protestants hold and practice their tradi- 
tions, and defend 7^earZ^ all their important prin- 
ciples ! It requires great moral courage and 
Christian heroism in Baptists to attack these 
principles, since they know they will be precipi- 
tated into a fierce conflict with all Protestant 
sects, and expose themselves to their displeas- 
ure, hatred, and often their bitter persecuticHis 



116 THE tri-leMxAia; or, 

This ought not so to be. We can not believe 
that the Savior ever intended his followers to be 
thus divided and conflicting. We believe there 
are many precious Christians in the Pedobap- 
tist sects, though in great error. We have no 
bitterness — nothing but love in our heart toward 
them, and this leads us to pray for them, and 
endeavor to convince them of their error ; to 
leave men and follow Christ. They should unite 
with us against the in-rolling flood of Catholicism, 
if they love their country or the religion of 
Christ : and they can not do this so long as they 
hold the distinctive principles of the Papacy in 
common with Papists. We beseech them for the 
Bake of their land'and religion, to repudiate these 
and unite with us upon the word of God, and 
let the Bible and the Bible alone^ he our relig- 
ion. Let our principles be blazoned upon our 
banner : 

A PURE Bible only— our Prayer-Book, 
Confession, and Discipline. 

No regeneration but the Holy Spirit 
AND THE Word op God. 

No salvation but by grace. Observinq 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 117 

ALL THINGS, AND THOSE ONLY, WHICH ChRISI 
COMMANDED, AND AS HE COMMANDED. 

I protest I have not noticed the Papal feat* 
ures of Protestantism but with the kindest 
feelings and the purest motives. These are the 
weak points of Protestantism. It is behind the 
age, as well as unsupported by the Bible. .The 
Reformation needs another Luther. Were he 
once more to direct it, we have reason to believe 
that, with the light of this age, he would reform 
it of every feature of Romanism ; he would 
effect the reformation he so ardently desired in 
his day, restore to it the primitive immersion of 
believers, and republicanize its government. 
Protestantism was chilled in the sliadoio of the 
sixteenth century. It has made no advancement. 
It is still either afraid to trust the people with 
self-government, or its clergy have become too 
corrupt to yield up the reins and scepter of 
ecclesiastical domination. The nineteenth cen- 
tury has demonstrated the truth of God's word, 
that man is capable of, and created for self- 
government, and that it is the only form of 
government that will secure for humanity, indi 



118 THE TRI-LEMMA; OR, 

vidually or nationally, in Church or State, the 
proper incentive to progress, the largest freedom, 
and the greatest happiness. Let Protestantism, 
then, bow to this fact, and grant to its member- 
ship the inalienable right which the Creator 
and Redeemer of man vouchsafed him, and which 
the Papal and Protestant clergy have so long 
and so iniquitously usurped and withheld fro^^ 
him. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 119 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CLAIMS OF BAPTISTS. 

J^d Baptists spring from the Papal Church, or receive their 
Ordinations and Baptisms from the Man of Sin ? 

APTISTS claim that they are successors 




fo 



CV 



to the "Witnesses of Jesus/' who pre- 
served the faith once delivered to the 
iX saints, and kept the ordinances as they 
were originally committed to the primi- 
tive Churches. They claim to be the lineal 
descendants of the martyrs who, for so many 
ages, sealed their testimony with their blood. 
They claim that they can trace the history 
of communities, essentially like themselves, 
back through the " wilderness," into which they 
were driven by the dragon, and the beast that 
succeeded to him, and the image of the beast, by 
a trail of bloody lighted up by a thousand stake- 
fires, until that blood mingles with the blood of 



120 THE tri-lemma; or, 

tlie apostles, and the Son of God, and John the 
Baptist. They believe that they never did, 
( cclesiastically, symbolize with the Papacy, but 
ever repudiated it as Antichrist, and withdrew 
from it, and refused to recognize its baptisms 
or ordinances, or its priests as the ministers 
of Christ. These are bold claims, Ave admit ; 
yet, if we can sustain them successfully against 
those of any other communion, it is not only 
our rights but our imperative duty to do so. 

I propose to do so, not by Baptist testimony, 
but by the united and concurrent testimony of 
Protestants and Papists. 

It would be conceded by any judge or jury 
that my case was an incontestable one, should 
I sustain it, beyond a doubt, hj the witnesses of 
wy opponent ! 

1. It has been charged that American Bap- 
lists sprang from Roger Williams^ and their 
baptisms from his informal and unscriptural one. 

The facts are, that Roger Williams never was 
a member^ much less a minister^ of any Baptist 
Church in England or America. He was con- 
verted to. ^nd advocated, their views of baptism 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 121 

and civil and religious liberty. It is true that he 
immersed Ezekiel Holliman, who, in turn, bap- 
tized him ; and he again, ten or eleven others ; 
and so formed a society; but he continued with 
it only four months, when he repudiated what he 
had done, and his society soon came to nothing. 
Cotton Mather, the cotemporary of Williams, 
a distinguished Pedobaptlst Puritan minister, 
(see Mather's History,) said it soon came to 
nothing. 

It can not be shown that anj Baptist Church 
sprang from Williams's aifair. 

Nor can it be proved that the baptism of any 
Baptist minister came from Williams's hands. 

Tlie oldest Baptist Church in America is the 
one now existing, "with her original articles of 
faith, in Newport, R. I., and she was planted by 
Dr. John CLark before Williams was baptized. 
He received his baptism in Elder Stillwell's 
Church in London, and that Church received 
hers from the Dutch Baptists of Holland, send- 
ing over a minister to be baptized by them. 
These Baptists descended from the Waldensei^., 
v?hose historical line reaches far back and con- 

u 



t'Al THE tri-lemma; or, 

nects Avith the Donatists, and theirs to the Apos 
tolical Churches. 

A writer in the Christian Review condenseg 
the facts of history'^ into the following eleven 
statements, which can be confidently relied 
upon : 

"1. Roger Williams was baptized by Ezekiel 
HoUiman, March, 1639, and immediately after, 
he baptized Mr. Hoiliman and ten others. 

" 2. These formed a Church, or Society, of 
which Roger Williams was the pastor. 

"Four months after his baptism, that is, in 
July following, W. left the Church, and never 
afterward returned to it. As his doubts re- 
specting baptism and the perpetuity of the 
Church, which led to this step, must have com- 
menced soon after his baptism, it is not likely 
that he baptized any others. 

"4. The Church which Williams formed, 
' came to nothing,' or was dissolved soon 
after he left it. 

'' 5. It was reorganized, or another was 

"^' If any one wishes to see the documents themselves, 
let him send for a little work entitled " T/ce First Baptist 
Church in Providence not the First Baptist Church in 
America^'' 25 cts. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 123 

formed a few days afterward, under Mr. Thomas 
Olney as its pastor, who was one of the eleven 
baptized by Roger Williams. Olney continued 
to be the pastor of this Church until his death, 
in 1682, somewhat over 30 years. 

" C. In 1653 or '54, which was a few years after 
the formation of Olney's Church, there was a 
division in that Church on the question of May- 
ing on of hands'^ in the reception of members, 
and a separate Church was formed for the 
maintenance of this ceremony, under the pastor- 
ship of Chad Browne, Wickenden, and Dexter. 
This Church was perpetuated, having, in 1808, 
given up its original faith as to the hiying on 
of hands, and is now the First Baptist Church 
m Providence. 

" 7. The parent Church, under Olney, grad- 
ually dwindled away, and became extinct about 
the year 1718, some seventy years from its 
origin. 

" 8. No Church was formed from Olney's after 
the division already mentioned, and no ministers 
are known to have gone out from it. Ohiey's 
baptism, whether valid or invalid, was not prop- 
agated. 

" 9. Nearly a century passed before the 
Church formed from Olney's began to colonize, 
in 1730. 



124 THE tri-lemma; or, 

'^10. None of its ministers, or the ministen 
of the Churches formed from it, received their 
bjiptism from Williams, or from any one whose 
baptisms descended from his. 

"11. The Baptist Churches of America, then, 
could not have descended from Roger Williams, 
or from the temporary society which he formed. 
Their true descent is from the Baptist Churches 
of Wales and Piedmont, extending back to the 
apostles' times." 

2. It has been charged that Baptists are the 
descendants of the fanatical Anabaptists of 
Munster. 

But few now are so reckless as to make this 
charge, since it has been so clearly refuted by 
Baptists and admitted hj so many candid Pedo- 
baptist scholars. Only a certain class of Pedo- 
baptists, the basest sort of their ministry, propa- 
gate this shmder now. Merle D'Aubigne, a 
Presbyterian, and the distinguished author of the 
History of the Reformation, who had a perfect 
acquaintance with all the facts, and wrote upon 
the very ground, in the preface to his work pub- 
lished by the American Tract Society, says : 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 125 

"On one point, it seems necessary to guara 
against misapprehension. Some persons im- 
agine that the Anabaptists of the times of 
the Reformation^ and the Baptists of our day, 
are the same. But they are as different as pos- 
sible.'' 

Fessenden's JEncydopedia (quoted with ap- 
probation by D'Aubigne) says : 

" Anabaptist. — The English and Dutch Bap- 
tists do not consider the word as at all applica- 
ble to their sect. It is but justice to observe 
that the Baptists of Holland, England, and the 
United States, are essentially distinct from 
those seditious and fanatical individuals above 
mentioned; as they profess an equal aversion 
to all principles of rebellion of the one, and 
enthusiasm of the other. — Preface to Reforma- 
lion, p. 10. 

The fact is, the Munster Anabaptists were 

many of them sprinklers, who were dissidents 

from Rome but not converts to the Lutheran or 

Genevan creeds, and therefore, equally obnox 

ious to the displeasure of Luther and Calvin. 

A writer has well said: 
11* 



126 THE tri-lemma; or, 

'' Under the very generic nnme of Anabaptist, 
the greatest imaginable variety of characters 
passed — that some were 'sober and virtuous ' 
persons, while many others were mere 'political 
speculators and adventurers.'^^ 

Now it is an act of the greatest injustice to 
call all these Baptists. Are we to be stigmatized 
for the doings of sprinlders? or to be blamed 
with the faults of infant baptizers ? or to be 
held accountable for the misdemeanors of '' mere 
political speculators and adventurers ? " AVe 
never acknowledged any such thing in our Zion. 
They are a?i^i-Baptists. Those Anabaptists who 
w^ere of "the genuine Baptist order/^ disclaimed 
all connections with the political religious mass. 
We must separate between those who were truly 
and properly Baptists, or as their enemies term 
them, AnahaptistSy and all that impure and gross 
religious material, which is received as theirs by 
unfair and designing Pedobaptist historians. 
The Reformation deluged the Baptist Zion with 
hundreds and thousands who w^ere scarcely 
cleansed from the polluting embraces of the 
mother of harlots. They were dragged from the 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 127 

cloisters, and convents, and confessionals of mys- 
tical Babylon by the magic names of Luther and 
Calvin ; but they were only half awakened. Their 
notions were crude and ill-digested, and ready to 
be guided by any and every master spirit; and if, 
forsooth, they did not in every particular, sub- 
scribe the Lutheran or Zwinglian creeds, whether 
of Church or State, they were straightway styled 
Anabaptists. Hence, we find almost all kinds 
of persons bearing this title. But a ''portion 
of them were of the genuine Baptist order ; " 
this was a little nucleus of true saints, around 
whose Zion both Protestants and Catholics 
" heaped their cast-ofF rubbish, as if the more 
easily to consume it wit'h their fiery persecu- 
tions/' But the genuine Anabaptists existed to 
repudiate the very first appearance and work- 
ings of the " Man of Sin." Before Luther pro- 
tested, or the Papacy w\as, they are. They 
existed as a distinct people ages before these 
Protestant daughters of Rome were born. They 
were the only "salt of the earth," and the 
'Might of the world,*' during tiie sixteen hundred 
years that preceded the Reformation. The Bap 



;28 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

tista Hione supplica mat nosz or rnavtvr?, Avhose 
souls John saw under the throne, impatient for 
their names and testimony to be vindicated by 
the coming of the Son of God. 

I bring forward here Mosheim, one of their 
bitterest enemies, a distinguished Lutheran his- 
torian, whose work is universally a standard. 
lie so hated the faith of the Baptists, as to 
stigmatize it as " a flagitious and intolerahle 
heresy. ^^ Yet this historian, while he could trace 
each existing Protestant and Papist sect back to 
the very day of its birth, and to i\\Q spot of its 
origin, and give the name of its father and 
founder y and give us every year of its history — 
showing that no wilderness -liJce ohscicrity^ no 
hiding, could be predicated of them — yet he wa.s 
forced to admit that the origin of the Baptists 
was of no modern date, but hidden in the re- 
mote depths of antiquity : 

*'The true origin of that sect which acquired 
the name of Ana^baptists, by their administering 
anew the rite of baptism to those who came 
over to their communion, and derived that of 
Mennonites from that famous man to whom they 



DEATH BY TFIREE IIOKNS. 129 

owe the greatest part of their present felicity, 

IS HID IN THE REMOTE DEPTHS OF ANTIQUITY, 

and is, consequently, extremely difficult to be 
ascertained." — VoL ^V, pp. 427, 8, Madaine's 
Edition of 1811. 

Again : 

" It may be observed that the Mennonites are 
not entirely mistaken when they boast of their 
descent from the Waldenses, Petrobrussians, and 
other ancient sects, who ^vere usually considered 
as witnesses of the truth, in the times of univer- 
sal darkness and superstition. Before the rise of 
Luther and Calvin, there lay, concealed [this 
looks like a fulfillment of the Revelation, where 
we find the woman driven into the wilderness — 
i. e,, obscurity !] in almost all the countries 
of Europe, particularly in Bohemia, Moravia, 
Switzerland, and Germany, many persons who 
adhered tenaciously to the following doctrines, 
which the Waldenses, Wicliffites and Hussites, 
[we do not feel reproached by association with 
such spirits,] had maintained, some in a more 
disguised, and others in a more public manner, 
viz. : " That the kingdom of Christ, or the visi- 
ble Church he had established upon earth, was 
an assembly of true and real saints, and ought. 



130 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

therefore, to be inaccessible to the wicked anH 
unrighteous, a^nd also exempt from all those 
institutions which human prudence suggests, to 
oppose the progress of iniquity, or to correct 
and reform transgressors/' 

This is a frank admission that the Waldenses, 
as well as the WicliflStes, were opposed to infant 
baptism and Church membership, since they ad- 
mitted none but '' real saints^^^ into the visible 
Church, and that they — as Baptists have ever 
been — were opposed to a religion oi force and 
'persecution. 

We would be willing to rest the claims of 
Baptists to the highest antiquity, and to Scrip- 
tural orthodoxy, upon this testimony alone. 

Now, let a Presbyterian testify concerning 
the antiquity of Baptists. We ask Zwingle, the 
celebrated Swiss reformer, who was cotempo- 
rary with Luther, Munzer, and Stork : 

"The institution of Anabaptism is no novelty, 
but for thirteen hundred years has caused great 
disturbance in the Church, and has acquired 
such a strength, that the attempt in this age to 
contend with it, appeared futile for a time." 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 131 

This carries our history back to A. D. 225 ! 
Zwingle, may well say that Anabaptism had ac- 
quired great strength in his day. 

In the little State of Bohemia alone, Baptists 
numbered eighty thousand. 

One of the Waidensian bards, George Morell, 
stated that in his day, 1533, there were more 
than eight hundred thouL^aL^d persons professing 
the faith of the WaldensoiL'."** 

Lemborch, professor of divinity in the Uni- 
versity of Amsterdam, and ^ho wrote a history 
of the Inquisition, in compa.^ing the Waldenses 
with tLd Christians of his own times, says : 

"To \o.?ak i'>onestly what I thii^k of all the 
modern t'^tU of Christians, the Dutch Baptists 
most resea.llo bo'h the Albigenses and Wal- 
denses, but ^-^LTti^ukTly the latter.^'f 

But, have w(*. not l^.ra persecuted and worn 
down for, lo ! thos3 ^\velyo hundred years? il:is 
not the Apocalyptic '' WoM/^N,' ' dcring all th> 



*■ See Orchard, vol. 1, pr^'t- 1.'80. 

"(■ Ivobinson's Ecclesiastical Kss'^a-z'^htx^; v ^H. 



132 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

time, been drunk with our blood, and heaven 
filling with our martyred brethren ? 

We appeal to Cardinal Ilosius, President of 
the Council of Trent, (A. D.. 1650,) the most 
learned t:nj powerful Catholic of his day. Hear 
him testify : 

" If the tru.^b of religion were to be judged of 
by the readine&;> and cheerfulness which a man 
of any sect sho^i? in suffering, then the opinion 
and persuasion of no sect can be truer and surer 
than that of Anabivptists, [Baptists,] since there 
have been nom-^ fo' these tivelve hundred years 
past, that have heer^ more generally 2^unisJied, 
or that have more cheerfully and steadfastly 
undergone, and even offered themselves to, 
the most cruel sorts of punishment, than these 
people." 

"The Anabaptists are a pernicious sect, of 
which kind the Waldensian brethren seem also to 
have been. Nor is this heresy a modern thing, 
for it existed in the time of Austin." — Hees's 
Reply to Wall, p. 20. 

Austin was born A. D. 354. This gives Bap 
tists a high ant^.^uity ; and the fact that Austin 
was not baptized in infancy, and yet was born of 



DEATH BY THREE HORNfe. 133 

Christian parents, proves that Pedobaptism was 
not in existence, or, at least, not very general, 
in this century. That infant baptism was a 7ieio 
tiling in this early age, is proved by the addi- 
tional facts that neither Basil, Bishop of Nicene, 
nor Chrysostom, nor Jerome of Strydon, nor 
Theodore, the Emperor, nor Gregory Nazienzen, 
nor Ambrose, nor Polycrates, nor Nectaries, nor 
Constantino the Great, were baptized in infancy, 
though born of Christian parents/"^ 

We add the following from Orchard, vol. i, 
p. 49: 

^'Dr. Field observes, on the histories of these 
great men,f 'that very many that were born of 
Christian parents, in the fourth and fifth centu- 
ries, delayed their baptism for a long lime, in- 
somuch that many Avere made bishops before 
they were baptized/ The same views are sup- 

* See Robinson^ s History of Baptism, chap. xiii. sec. 5 , 
and Wall^ vol. iv. 

t Since these names, with others which could be re- 
corded, are some of the*most distinguished for respcctahi]- 
ity, in the annals of history, one plain evidence cnforcoa 
itself upon our attention, that Pedobaptism Avas unknown 
among royalty, courtiers, and respectaLle persons in Eu 
rope, at the period of these eminent men's births. 
12 



134 THE TIII-LE.MMA ; OR, 

ported by Beatus Rlienaniis, and Mr. Den ; the 
latter mentions Pancratius, Pontius, Nazarius, 
Tecla, Luigerus, Erasma Tusca, all offsprings of 
believers, and yet not baptized till aged. Similar 
observations are made by the leurned Daille 
and Dr. Barlow.* 

" The great champion for infant baptism. Dr. 
W. Wall, remarks: 'It seems to me that the 
instances Avhicli the Baptists give of persons not 
baptized in infancy, though born of Christian 
parents, are not, if the matter of fact be true, 
so inconsiderable as this last plea [the sayings 
of the Fathers] would represent. On the con- 
trary, the persons tlteij mention are so many, 
and SUCH noted persons, that, if they be 
allowed, it is an argument that leaving children 
unbaptized was no unusual, but a frequent and 
ordinary thing ; for, it is obvious to conclude, 
that if we can, in so remote an age, trace the 
practice of so many that did tliis, it is probable 
that a great many more of whose birth and bap- 
tism we do not read did the like. This I Avill 
own, that it seems to me the argument of the 
greatest weight of any that is brought on tlie 
Baptist side in tliis dispute about antiquit3^' "f 

«• Danver's Treat., p. 72. Daille's Us5 of the Fathers, 
b. 2, ch. 6, Eeas. 6, p. 149. 

t History of Inf. Bap., p. 2, ? IG, p. 42. Wc admit 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 13o 

We conclude this chapter with the words of 
Curcelleus : 

" Pedobaptism was not known in the world 
the two first ages after Christ; in the third and 
fourth it was approved hy few ; at length in the 
fifth and following ages, it began to obtain in 
divers places ; and therefore, we (Pedobaptists) 
observe this rite, indeed, as an ancient custom, 
but not as an apostolic tradition. The custom 
of baptizing infants did not begin before the 
third age after Christ, and that there appears 
not the least footstep of it for the first two cen- 
turies,"* 

But we have yet the crowning testimony of 
two Pedobaptist historians, that should convince 
the most incredulous of our candid opponents. 

In the year 1819, Dr. Ypeij, Professor of the 
University of Gunningen, and Dr. J. J. Der- 
mout, chaplain to the King of Holland, distia- 
guished Pedobaptist scholars, published a his- 
tory, in four volumes, entitled, "-History of the 
Reformed Church of the NetherlandH^ — of which 

sprinkling to be more ancient than John, Jesus, or Moses. 
(See Kobinson's Hist, of Bap. c. 6, pp. 39-42.) 
* Stennett's Ans., etc., p. 87. 



136 THE tri-lemma; or, 

Church they were members — in ^Yhich work they 
devote a chapter to the history of the Dutch 
Baptists. I have space for only the frank state- 
ment of the conclusion to which their impartial 
investigation led them : 

*'We have now seen that the Baptists, who 
were formerly called Anabaptists, and in later 
limes Mennonites, were the original Waldenses, 
and who have long, in the history of the Church, 
received the honor of that origin. On this 

ACCOUNT, THE BAPTISTS MAY BE CONSIDERED THE 

ONLY Christian community which has stood 
SINCE TjiE Apostles, and as a Christian so- 
ciety W^HICH HAS preserved PURE THE DOCTRINK 

OF THE Gospel through all ages. The per- 
fectly correct external economy of the Baptist 
denomination, tends to confirm the truth dis- 
puted by the Romish Church, that the Reform- 
ation brought about in the sixteenth century 
was in the highest degree necessary ; and at 
the same time goes to refute tlie erroneous no- 
tions of the Catholics, that their communion is 
the most ancient." — See Encyclopedia of Ilclig' 
ions Knoivledge, Art. Mennonitks; also, the 
jSouthern Baptist Revieiv^ VoL v, No. 1, Art. 1, 
for full translation of the chapter. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 137 

That Dermout and Ypeij are not unsupported 
by historical authority, in their statements re- 
specting the difference between the Anabapti.sts 
and the Baptists, will appear from an article in 
"• The New Royal Encyclopedia/' This great 
work, by Wm. II. Hall, Esq., with other learned, 
ingenious gentlemen, Avas begun in London in 
1788, and completed in three large folio volumes. 
In the article "Anabaptists,'' after recounting 
the excesses of Muntzer, Matthias, Borkholdt, 
and others, during the sixteenth century, in 
Germany, the Encyclopedia proceeds : 

"It is to be remarked that the Baptists or 
Mennonites in England and Holland are to be 
considered in a very different light from the 
enthusiasts we have been describing, and it ap- 
pears equally uncandid and invidious to trace 
up their distinguished sentiments, as some of 
their adversaries have done, to those obnoxious 
characters, and then to stop, in order, as it 
were, to associate with it the ideas of turbulence 
and fanaticism, with which it certainly has no 
natural connection. Their coincidence with 
some of those oppressed and infatuated people 
in denying baptism to infants, is acknowledged 
by the Baptists, but thev disavow the practice 
12* 



138 THE tri-lemma; or, 

which the appellation of Anabaptists implies; 
and their docti'ines seem referable to a more 
ancient and respectable origin. They appear 
supported by history in considering themselves 
the descendants of the Waldenses, who were so 
grievously oppressed and persecuted by the des- 
potic heads of the Romish hierarchy." 

We have thus indicated, but by no means 
exhausted, our sources of proof, in establishing 
the claims of the Baptist denomination to be 
the community established by Christ as his vis- 
ible Church. The Welsh Baptists trace their un- 
broken descent from apostolic times ; and from 
Wales came many of our earliest Churches in 
America.* 

Baptists not only can lay a just claim to the 
highest antiquity of any acknowledged Christian 
communit}'', but to them belongs the distinguish- 
ing honor of having been the first, and for nearly 
eighteen centuries the only, assertors of civil 



* Those who wish to be satisfied with the strength of 
our claims wiU do well to read, after the New Testament, 
Orchard's Chronological History of the Baptists, vol?, i. 
and ii. ; Robinsoyi's History of Baptism^ and Ecclesiastical 
Researchess vols. i. and ii. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 139 

and religious liberty. In whatever land the 
inestimable right is to-day enjoyed, it was 
planted there by Baptist hands, and watered by 
Baptist blood. Not only against the Popes of 
Rome, but against the Reformers, Luther, 
Zwingle, and Calvin, did the Baptists maintain 
this doctrine. 

Not to Luther, or his Church, does the world 
attribute the principle, that the conscience of no 
one should he constrained or coerced in religious 
matters; for, as an opposer and persecutor of 
the Anabaptists, he had no equal in his day — 
stirring up the princes of Germany to annihilate 
them from their dominions, as he did by his 
letters, and prodigious numbers were devoted to 
death in its most dreadful forms.* 

Not to Zwingle, the Swiss Presbyterian, who 
instigated the cantons of Switzerland to pass such 
murderous laws, which devoted to cruel death so 
many Baptist men and women ; not to Zwingle, 
who pronounced the death sentence, and its 
form, upon the noble Hubmeyer, '' his old 
friend, the companion of his earlier studies,'' 

^ Mosheim, vol. iii, p. 79. 



140 THE TRI-LEMMA; OR, 

who, in the sacred relations of friend and fellow- 
student, had known his doubts on baptism, and 
had himself felt their force. . This man, the 
father of Swiss Presbjterianism, "^is reported 
by Brunt" to have pronounced the Anabaptist's 
sentence in the few words scarcely less impious 
than unfeeling : ''Qui iterum mergit^ mergaturP 

Not to Calvin does the world owe the idea or - 
the practice of religious liberty^ or even tolera- 
tion; for " he instigated the persecuting laws of 
Geneva, and he it was who had arrested, con- 
demned, and roasted, in a sloiv fire of green woody 
the martyr Servetus." 

Mosheim, a Lutheran himself, confesses '' there 
were certain sects and doctors, against whom 
the zeal, vigilance, and severity of Catholics, 
Lutherans, and Calvinists were united. The 
objects of their common aversion ivere the Ana- 
haptistsJ^ And it has been so from that day to 
the present. 

The sentiments of the Baptists, which were 
then so disliked by statesmen, clergy, Protest- 
ants and Papists, and for which Baptists are to- 
day everywhere persecuted and oppressed by 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 141 

Protestants and Papists, are thus stated by 
Orchard : 

"We have recorded that the Baptists were the 
common objects of aversion to Catholics, Luther- 
ans, and Calvinists, whose united zeal was di- 
rected to their destruction. So deeply were 
these prejudices interwoven with the State party, 
that the knights on oath were to declare their 
abhorrence of Anabaptism. The sentiments of 
these people, and which were so disliked by 
statesmen, clergy, and reformers, may be stated 
under five views, viz. : " A love of civil liberty 
in opposition to magisterial dominion ; an affirm- 
ation of the sufficiency and simplicity of revela- 
tion, in opposition to scholastic theology; a zeal 
for self-government, in opposition to clerical 
authority ; a requisition of the reasonable service 
of a personal profession of Christianity rising out 
of man's own convictions, in opposition to the 
practice of force on infants — the whole of which 
they deem superstition or enthusiasm ; and the 
indispensable necessity of virtue in every indi- 
vidual member of a Christian Church, in dis- 
tinction from all speculative creeds, all rites and 
ceremonies, and parochial divisions.' These 
views, to the statesman, v/ere adverse to his 
line of policy with his peasants ; to the clergy 



142 ' THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

they were offensive, since it placed every man 
on a level with the priesthood, and sanctioned 
one to instruct another ; to the Reformers they 
were objectionable, since they broke the national 
tie, and allowed all persons equal liberty to 
think, choose, and act in the affairs of the soul : 
thus these sentiments were the aversion of all. 
An edict issued by Frederick, at a later period, 
shows how unpalatable these views were. His 
majesty expressed his astonishment at the 
number of Anabaptists, and his horror at the 
principal error which they embraced, which was, 
that, according to the express declaration of the 
Holy Scriptures, (1 Cor. vii : 23,) they were to 
submit to no human authority. He adds that 
his conscience compelled him to proscribe them, 
and accordingly he banished them from his 
dominions on pain of death." 

We claim that Baptists were the first assertors 
of the principle of religious liberty in England. 
Mr. Williams, in speaking of the times of Crom- 
well, and the events of that period, says : 

" The share which the Baptists took in shoring 
up the fallen liberties of England, and in infusing 
new vigor and liberality into the constitution of 
that country, is not generally known. Yet to this 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 143 

body, English liberty owes a debt it can never 
acknowledge. Among the Baptists, Christian 
freedom found its earliest, its stanchest, its 
most consistent, and its most disinterested 
champions." 

We maintain, what authentic and received 
history so abundantly affirms, that Baptists were 
the first assertors of religious liberty in New 
England or on the American Continent. The 
first blood shed on these shores for religious 
liberty was Baptist blood, and it followed the ex- 
coriating lash, driven by Pedobaptist hands, by 
the order of a Pedobaptist court, under the 
direction of a Protestant State Church in New 
England. The last persons imprisoned in Amer- 
ica for preaching the Gospel were Baptists. We 
maintain that Baptists, singly and alone, and in 
face of the bitter opposition of Episcopalians, Pres- 
byterians, and Methodists, severed the Church 
and State in Virginia, and abolished all laws 
oppressive to the conscience, and thus secured 
in the Old Dominion the triumph of civil and 
religious liberty. We maintain that America is 
indebted solely to Baptists, first, for the idea of a 



144 THE TRI-LEMMA ; OR, 

pure Democratic form of civil government, and 
then for having prepared the popular mind by 
the molding influence of their principles to re- 
ceive such a government, as well as for its 
present strength and sole hope of its perpetuity. 

The following facts were communicated to the 
Christian Watehman^ several years ago, by the 
Rev. Dr. Fishback, of Lexington, Ky. : 

"Mr. Editor: The following circumstance, 
which occurred in the' State of Virginia, relative 
to Mr. Jefferson, was detailed to me by Elder 
Andrew Tribble, about six years ago, w^ho since 
died when ninety-two or three years old. The 
facts may interest some of your readers. 

" Andrew Tribble was the pastor of a small 
Baptist Church which held monthly meetings at 
a short distance from Mr. Jefferson's house, 
eight or ten years before the American Revolu- 
tion. Mr. Jefferson attended the meetings of 
the Church several months in succession, and 
after one of them he asked EUler Tribble to go 
home and dine with him, with which he complied. 

''Mr. Tribble asked Mr. Jefferson how he was 
pleased with their Church government? Mr. 
Jefferson replied that it had struck him with 
great force, and had interested him much ; that 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 145 

he considered it the only form o? pure democracy 
that then existed in the world, and had concluded 
til at it would be the best plan of government for 
the American colonies. This was several years 
before the Declaration of Independence." 

Gervinus, the most astute and philosophic 
historian of his age, in his work entitled, "An 
Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth 

Century," says : 

" In accordance with these principles, Roger 
Williams insisted in Massachusetts upon allowing 
entire freedom of conscience, and upon entire 
separation of the Church and the State. But 
he was obliged to flee, and in 1636 he formed in 
Rhode Island a small and new society, in which 
perfect freedom in matters of faith was allowed, 
and in which the majority ruled in all civil aff*airs. 
Here, in a little State, the fundamental principles 
of political and ecclesiastical liberty practically 
prevailed, before they were even taught in any 
of the schools of philosophy in Europe. At 
that time people predicted only a short existence 
for these democratical experiments — universal 
suffrage, universal eligibility to ofBce, the annual 
change of rulers, perfect religious freedom — the 
Miltonian doctrines of schisms. But not only 
13 



146 THE tri-lemma; or, 

have these ideas and these forms of government 
maintained themselves here, but precisely from 
this little State have they extended themselves 
throughout the United States. They have con- 
quered the aristocratic tendencies in Carolina 
and New York, the High Church in ^Virginia, 
the theocracy in Massachusetts, and the mon- 
archy in all America. They have given laws 
to a continent, and, formidable through their 
moral influence, they lie at the bottom of all the 
democratic movements which are now shaking the 
nations of Europe.'^ 

In his historical " Memoirs of the English 
Catholics," Charles Butler makes allusion, as 
follows, to our Baptist fathers : 

'' It is observable that this denomination of 
Christians, now truly respectable, but in their 
origin as little intellectual as any, first propa- 
gated the principles of religious liberty.'* 

We take a sincere pride in the fact that 
Baptists were the earliest witnesses for soul- 
freedom. Others have but followed in their 
track. They led the way, and made it clear to 
the vision of trampled nations, by pouring out 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 147 

their own blood to make it. This noble blow, 
Btruck before all others, in the warfare against 
spiritual despotism, should live for them, in the 
mind of the world, an enduring monument of 
hopeful and emulative remembrance. Yet, for 
our principles, we have been everywhere spoken 
against. Says Underbill : 

''The Papists abhorred the Baptists ; for, if 
their doctrines prevailed, a Church hoary with 
age, laden with the spoils of many lands, rich 
in the merchandise of souls, must be broken down 
and destroyed. The Protestants hated them ; 
for their cherished headship, their worldly alli- 
ances, the pomps and circumstances of State 
religion, must be debased before the kingly 
crown of Jesus. The Puritans defamed them ; 
for Baptist sentiments were too liberal and free 
for those who sought a Papal authority over 
conscience, and desired th^ sword of the higher 
powers to enforce their wily discipline." 

Says Shelden & Willard : 

" The Baptists have ever been the firm friends 
and supporters of religious liberty. The right 
which they claim for themselves of professing 
their own religion, they cheerfully concede to all. 
To punish men for religious opinions peaceably 



148 THE TRI-LEMMA J OR, 

asserted, without injury to civil society, they 
consider as persecution/^ 

Papists and Protestants have united in the 
destruction of Baptists. 

"During the wars of the Reformation, the 
Papists and Protestants destroyed each other in 
every possible manner. Never were enemies 
more bitter or uncompromising. In but one 
thing only was it possible for them to agree, and 
that was the persecution of Baptists. Here they 
harmonized perfectly ; and it is remarkable that 
in several of their treaties, as recorded by Dr. 
Merle D'Aubigne, special articles were inserted, 
binding both parties to use every possible effort 
to destroy all the Baptists in Europe." — Address 
before the American Baptist Historical Society. 

Baptists are still prosecuting their great mis- 
sion in England aryi Europe, remonstrating 
against the iniquitous union of Church and 
State, and pleading with Protestants to grant 
universal liberty of conscience in religion. 

The British Banner^ of July 10, 1850, states 
that a petition was presented from one hundred 
and twenty ministers and delegates of the As- 
•ociated Baptist Churches of Yorkshire, praying 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 149 

for tlie separation of Church and State, and 
that the national property, hitherto engrossed 
by a few sects, might be devoted to secular and 
really useful purposes* 

Let monarchists and Papists hate and sneer 
at Baptists, but, with these facts before their 
eyes, how can true-hearted American republicans 
and patriots? With such a history, honored 
and pre-eminently illustrious as is the very 
name of Baptist by the glories of such princi- 
ples and such heroic achievements under such 
sacrifices, Baptists can afford to bear the odium 
attempted to be cast upon them by the descend- 
ants of those who shed their blood. 

^' Many attempts have been made to extermi- 
nate them. Like their- earlier brethren, 'they 
had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, 
moreover, of bonds and imprisonment ; they were 
stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, 
were slain with the sword ; they wandered about 
in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being destitute, 
afflicted, tormented. ^ ^ ^ They wandered 
in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and 
caves of the earth.^ But the 'blood of the 
martyrs was the seed of the Church.' Light 



150 THE tri-lemma; or, 

has succeeded darkness, hope despair, prosperity 
has followed adversity, and to-day the Baptist 
denomination stands as a monument to the fiiith- 
fulness of God, in fulfilling his promises to 
those who love, follow, and trust him." 

I can say, in closing this brief review of 
our principles and history, with a brother " Ana- 
baptist:" 

*'We feel no blush of shame mantling our 
cheeks as we trace the history of our fathers. 
True they were not great according to the 
world's estimate of greatness. They were not 
noble after any human standard patent of no- 
bility. Our Church did not spring into existence 
at the mandate of royalty. Our doctrines were 
not warmed into life by the sunshine of court 
favor. Our people did not occupy the high 
places of worldly dignity. They were the out- 
casts of the outcast. They w^ere the persecuted 
of the persecuted. They were counted un- 
worthy to dwell with those who were them- 
selves the victims of proscription. But they 
were among the moral heroes whose characters 
brighten under the searching light of history ; 
and they have left to their descendants a name 
which they may be proud to bear, and an 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 151 

example which they should be zealous to em* 
ulate. 

" They have swelled that list of confessors 
and martyrs to whom the world is slow to ren- 
der its acknowledgment. But their record is on 
high, and their time is sure." 

" Their blood was shed 
In confirmation of the noblest claim,— 
Our claim to feed upon immortal truth, 
To walk with God, to be divinely free, 
To soar and to anticipate the skies. 
Yet few remember them. They lived unknown, 
Till persecution dragged them into fame. 
And chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew— ■ 
No marble tells us whither. With their namea 
No bard embalms and sanctifies his song, 
And history, so warm on meaner themes, 
Is cold on this." 




APPEND IX. 



)INCE writing the above, the following 
additional facts have come to our knowl- 
edge : 

This question was recently up before 
the Free Church Presbytery of Kings- 
ton, Canada, and after discussing the ques- 
tion they came to the conclusion ''that it ought 
not to be considered Christian baptism, and that 
when converts from Romanism are admitted into 
the Church, they ought to receive the rite anew." 
The validity of Romish baptisms was likewise 
discussed in the Presbytery of Montreal, and it 
was decided that such baptisms were invalid. 
But the vote was a " tie vote," and this result 
was only secured by the casting vote of the 
Moderator ! 



APPENDIX. 158 

We take the following facts from the public 
journals : 

"The Portuguese Protestants who came to 
this country several years ago, and settled at 
Springfield and Jacksonville, Illinois, are still in 
trouble — the Old School Presbyterians requiring 
that they shall be baptized by a Presbyterian 
clergyman, and they, or a large portion of them, 
including Rev. Alphonso Demattos, insisting that 
the baptism received by them in the Roman 
Catholic Church, before leaving Madeira, is 
sufficient. The matter is now before the com- 
mittee appointed by the Presbytery." 

Will the Old School Presbyterians receive 
their baptism in the face of the decision of the 
General Assembly, given in 1845 ? 

But the most recent case is that of the cele- 
brated Father Chiniquay, of Kankakee, Illinois, 
who recently protested against, and came out of 
the Catholic Church, with about two thousand of 
his flock. Within the present month,* he, with 
most of his people, have been received by the 
Kankakee Presbytery, (Old School Presbyto- 

f January, 18G0. 



154 APPENDIX. 

rians,) with their Romish ha^Msms^ and this 
Father Chiniquay has been appointed to a charge 
by the Presbytery, without either baptism or 
ordination ! 

What will be the final result of this act on the 
part of this Presbytery ? Will not other Pres- 
byteries take an appeal to the next General 
Assembly? And if the question is again taken, 
then will the Assembly " back down," and 
reverse its former decision, or will it reaffirm it 
w^ith a formidable schism threatening it ? 

It strikes me that the next Old School Assem- 
bly will find itself in a dilemma. 



A HISTORICAL FACT. 

POPE STEPHEN THE AUTHOR OF SPRINKLIXO. 

The Rt. Rev. J. T. M. Trevern, D. D., Bishop 
of Strasburg, a high dignitary of the Catholic 
Church, in 1847, wrote a book in defense of 
his Church, called ''The Discussion Amicale." 
It wa5 addressed in the form of letters to the 
clergy of every Protestant communion, but 
especially to those of the Church of England. 



APPENDIX. ' 1S5 

Tlie object of the Avork was to show the incon- 
sistencies of Protestants in proclaiming the word 
of God as their only rule, while they follow the 
traditions of Rome. On page 147, vol. ii, he 

says : 

*' The clergy of Elizabeth, in unison with the 
innovators of the continent, and, like them, in 
opposition to the sacred books and antiquity, 
declared accordingly, that the holy Scripture 
containeth all things necessary to salvation ; so 
that whatsoever is not read therein, or can not be 
proved thereby, is not to be required of any man 
that it should be believed as an article of faith, 
or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. 
But, without going any further, show us, my 
lords, the validity of your baptism, by Scripture 
alone ! Jesus Christ there ordains that it shall 
be conferred, not by pouring water on the heads 
of believers, but by believers plunging into 
water. 

'' The word laptizo^ employed by the Evangel- 
ists, strictly conveys this signification, as tho 
learned are agreed, and at the head of them 
Casaubon, of all Calvinists the best learned in 
the Greek language. Now baptism by immer- 
sion has ceased for many ages, (among those 
whom this man esteem Christians, we, Anabap- 



]55 APPENDIX. 

lists, who always used immersion, he did not 
esteem Christians,) and jon yourselves, as w^ell 
as we, have only received it by infusion. It 
would, therefore, be all up with your baptism 
unless you established it by tradition and the 
practice of the Church, (i. e.j Roman Catholic.) 
This being settled, I ask you from whom have 
you received baptism ? Is it not from the 
Church of Rome ? And what do you think of 
her ? Do you not consider her as heretical, and 
even idolatrous ? You can not then, according to 
the terms of Scripture, prove the validity of your 
baptism, and to produce a plea for it, you are 
obliged to seek it with Pope Stephen, and the 
Councils of Aries and Nice, in Apostolic tra- 
dition/^ 

This is the testimony of one of the most dis- 
tinguished scholars in the Catholic Church, bear- 
ing testimony to a historical fact. Can his testi- 
mony be set aside ? 



PART II 



I. The Repeated Discussions of the O. S. 

Presbyterians. 
II. The Action of the Cumberland Presby- 
terians. 

III. The Tri-lemma of the Catholics. 

IV. The Tri-lemma of the Free-Will Baptists. 
V. The Tri-leminia of the Campbellites. 

VI. The Tri-lemma of the Anti-Missionary 
Baptists. 



(157) 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 59 



CHAPTER I. 

Repeated Discussions in O. S. P. Assembly — Action of the 
Free Church Presbytery of Kingston, Canada — Presby- 
tery of Montreal. 

^->&^ INCE writing the foregoing pages, twenty 

j^ years ago, there have been several redis- 

NoJ^ cussions of the validity of Romish baptisms 

cJC-^ and various efforts to rid the Assembly of 

tlie responsibility of deciding it, but like 

Banquo's ghost it will not down. 

In 1873 ^t came up in the Assembly, and after 
an unsatisfactory discussion, which satisfied that 
body that it could not come to a decision, it 
shifted the burden from its shoulders and laid it 
upon each local society, reporting: *^That each 
local church be left to decide for itself whether 
such baptisms were valid or not.'' But it seems 
that when the question came before the sessions of 
the local societies they could no more decide than 
the Assembly, to their own or the satisfaction of 
the .congregations, and so tlie question stole back 
through the church courts until it came before the 
General Assembly that met in Saratoga in 1875, 
when an ** overture" was presented adverse to the 



i6o THE tri-lemma; or, 

decision of 1873; ^"t the ''Committee on Bills 
and Overtures" reaffirmed the action of the Assem- 
bly of 1873. Something of the temper of that dis- 
cussion and the adventurous ground taken by Rev. 
Mr. Lewis and Dr. Patton that ''the Catholic is a 
branch of the church of Christ," I copy from the 
Cofisiitutionalist of that city : 

*'The report was attacked by Ekler C. D. Drake and 
Rev. Dr. Prime, and defended by Rev. Dr. Patton, Chair- 
man of the committee, who declared, as he had done in his 
opening sermon, that the Roman Caihohc is a branch of 
the Church of Christ. He said that in tlie fight against 
materialism, otherwise communism, and other enemies of 
Christianity, the Roman Catholics are one of the strongest 
allies which the Church has. The Rev. Dr. Prime de- 
nounced the decision of the committee as emanating from 
cloisters of theological seminaries. He said that while 
claiming to hold such doctrines as had been stated by Dr. 
Patton that the Catholics had apostatized from Christian- 
ity. Rev. Dr. Gantz then offered a sub>titute * that this 
assembly is not prepared to decide on the invalidity of all 
Catholic baptism, but prefer to leave it to church sessions 
and pastors.' The Rev. Dr. Patton gave a history of the 
overtures of 1835 and 1875. Wm. E. Dodge opposed any 
recognition of the Roman Catholic as a Christian Church. 
The Rev. Dr. Prime moved the overiure of 1835. 

''Resolved, That it is the deliberate and decided judg- 
ment of this Assembly that the Roman Catholic Church has 
apostatized from the religion of (>ur Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ, and therefore can not be recognized as a 
Christian Church. 

*' Rev. Mr. Lewis opposed the overiure moved by Dr. 
Prime, and upheld the Catholic Church as Christian." 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. l6l 

The question has also been up before the Free 
Church Presbytery of Kingston, Canada, and after 
discus-sing the question they came to the conclusion 
^^that it ought not to be considered Christian bap- 
tism, and that when converts from Romanism are 
admitted into the church they ought to receive the 
rite anew." 

The validity of Romish baptisms was likewise 
discussed in the Presbytery of Montreal, and it w^as 
decided that such baptisms were invalid. But the 
vote was a ^^tie vote," and this result was only 
secured by the casting vote of the Moderator ! 

Bishop Marvin — Methodist — states in his history 
of travels Vound the world — ^*To the East via 
the V/est" — that this vexed question awaited his 
coming at Dai Nippon, Japan : 

^^Then came a question that our home churches 
had been troubled with sometimes — a question 
which is already a practical one here. One of the 
helpers reported an inquirer who had been bap- 
tized by the Roman Catholics. Is this baptism 
valid?" — p. 32. 

This is all the good Bishop says about it. Not 
one word concerning how he answered it ! Why 
not? Because neither the Methodist Conferences 
in America, North or South, have answered or 
can answer it, and all agitation of it before their 
deluded people must be discountenanced for fear 
they will be brought to reflection and see and 
know that they are unbaptized — having none other 



i62 THE tri-lemma; or, 

than the baptism of the Apostate Church of Rome. 
An editor of one of their Advocates recendy said, 
commenting on the Presbyterian discussion : 

**A11 Protestant churches, without exception, 
received their baptism originally from the various 
churches of the reformation, and none of the re- 
formers of the sixteenth century who were baptized 
in the Romish Church were rebaptized." 

The only solace he gives his readers is the false 
statement that Baptist churches are in no better fix, 
having come out of Rome. Sir Isaac Newton re- 
peatedly declared to his friend Whiston, after a 
careful examination of Baptist history : 

**The modern Baptists, formerly called Anabaptists, are 
the only people that never symbolized with the Papacy." 
— Life of Whiston. 

Baptists are not Protestants — never belonged to 
the Catholic Church, never received their baptisms 
from her; but the Catholics apostatized from the Bap- 
tists ^ as I will show ere I close. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 63 




CHAPTER IL 

THE CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIANS. 

They Find Themselves in a Tri-lemma — Can Not Tell 
Whether They Are Baptized or Ordained, Because They 
Can Not Answer the Vexed Question. 



HE following report of the discussion of the 
Romish question in the Cumberland Presby- 
terian Assembly at Bowling Green in 1876 
I copy from the Cumberland Presbyterian, 
which is the organ of that church, and 
therefore the report can be relied upon : 

Bowling Green, Ky., May 24, 1876. 
The General Assembly met at 8:30 o'clock a. m., 
the Moderator presiding. 

OVERTURES. 

The Committee on Overtures submitted report 
No. 3, which is as follov/s: 

Your Committee on Overtures has had under con- 
sideration the question propounded to your reverend 
body by the Presbytery of Miami, and referred to 
us, and which is substantially as follows, viz : 

* ' Is baptism, as administered by the Roman Catho- 
lics, to be regarded as a valid Christian baptism?'' 



164 THE tri-lemma; or, 

The proper answer to this question depends, in 
the first place, on whether we should regard the 
Roman Catholic Church, so called, as a true church 
of Jesus Christ. On this question all Protestants 
are agreed, and have declared the Romish hier- 
archy anti-Christian and idolatrous. Then the 
priests of the Papal power are not ministers of 
Christ, for they are commissioned by the Pope of 
Rome, the head of this anti-Christian power, or 
man of sin. 

Secondly, we say (Confession of Faith, chap, 
xxviii, sec. 11), **The outward elements to be used 
in the sacrament (of baptism) is water, wherewith 
the party is to be baptized in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost by 
a minister of the Gospel, lawfully called thereunto." 
And in the Directory of Worship, chap, vii, sec. 5, 
we say: ^* After calling the child by its name he 
[the minister] shall say, * I baptize thee in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost.' As he pronounces these words, he is to 
baptize the child with water, by pouring or sprink- 
ling it on the face of the child, w^ithout adding any 
other ceremony; and the whole shall be concluded 
with prayer.'* 

To the above simple rite, established by Christ, 
the Romish Church has added a long list of super- 
stitious rites and ceremonies not taught by Christ 
or his apostles. Salt must be put in the mouth; 
the forehead, eyes, breast, shoulders and ears are 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 65 

to be signed with the sign of the cross. The nos- 
trils and ears must be touched with spittle, then 
water is applied in the name of the Trinity, after 
which the subject is to be anointed with oil between 
the shoulders and breasts. [See *^ Catechism of 
Trent,'' pages 134 and 135.] Can you regard such 
Pagan rites as these as Christian baptism ? 

Your committee are of the opinion that you can 
not, and we therefore recommend that you answer 
the interrogatory of the memorialists in the nega- 
tive. Notwithstanding this, each church session 
must decide for itself what shall be done in each 
particular case that may come before them, as no 
absolute rule can be laid down which will meet the 
peculiarities of every case. 

W. S. Campbell, Chairman. 

Rev. Mr. Lack said that about one-half of the 
membership of his church came from the Catholic 
Church, and they objected to being re-baptized. 
Should he tell them that unless they receive water 
baptism from his hands they must leave? He 
hoped that the Committee on Overtures would re- 
turn that memorial to the memorialists, and let the 
church- sessions and the pastors take the matter 
into consideration. The time w^ould come when 
the proceedin[^r. of the General Assembly will be 
published in the different nations, and they will be 
scrutinized by them. The adoption of this report 
would have the tendency to grind down to the 
ground little infants that were born in heathen 



t66 the tri-lemma; or, 

countries. Even if the Catholic Church was not a 
Christian body it had an ecclesiastical existence. 
He hoped that he would not be driven out from 
the good work he was prosecuting among this class 
of people. 

Rev. James Vinson said he understood the report 
to assume that Roman Catholic baptism could not 
be regarded as Christian baptism. History had it 
that less than four hundred years ago an infant 
named John Calvin was baptized by a Roman 
Catholic priest, and he never renounced his bap- 
tism, and never was re-baptized, and if they should 
now renounce Catholic baptism, that virtually de- 
creed that they had no Christian baptism in their 
Church. Calvin was the founder of Presbyterian- 
ism, and their Presbyterianism ran back to John 
Calvin. 

Rev. J. H. Barnett called the attention of the 
General Assembly to what the Lord had said to 
one of the churches in olden time, that if they did 
not repent he would remove their candlestick out 
of its place, and that when John Calvin, Luther 
and others come out of the church they brought 
the candlestick with them. 

Rev. W.^ A. Williams said he had received Catho- 
lics in the church soon after he commenced preach- 
ing. He would ask the question: **Have you 
been baptized?" If the applicants had been bap- 
tized they replied in the afiirmative, and then he 
would ask : *'Are you satisfied with your baptism?" 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 67 

and ihey would answer that they were. This was 
the mode in which he administered the ordinance 
of baptism, and the committee did not say that he 
should not do it. 

Rev. G. B. Russell wanted light on this impor- 
tant question. It had been a bone of contention in 
his Synod until finally that body decided that Roman 
Catholic baptism was not valid. There was a pro- 
test entered, and it would have been before this 
Assembly if the Stated Clerk of his Synod had done 
his duty. 

Rev. Thomas Thomas said that when a grave 
subject came up before the body like this question, 
he would not endeavor to intercept a free dicussion 
and thorough investigation. The fondness Bro. 
Lack had in his cause among his German Romans 
was, no doubt, a matter that rested near his heart, 
and the speaker appreciated the interest Bro. Lack 
had taken in conversions to Jesus Christ. The 
speaker also appreciated the manner of Bro. 
WiUiams in receiving persons in baptism as ortho- 
dox, but when speakers ran back to the Christian- 
ity of the Roman Church and endeavored to 
impress upon their minds that they were to recog- 
nize them as Christians, he had something to say. 
The Catholics had expressed the wish that they 
hoped to see the day when they would ride in 
Protestant blood up to the bridles of their horses. 
Victor Emanuel did a great work when he put a 
stop to the Pope's effort to manage the secular mat- 



1 68 THE tri-lemma; or, 

ters of the world, and the old Pope had been sick 
nearly ever since. As one of the lovers of Protest- 
antism, and as one who had been laboring for 
forty-six years for the promotion and growtli of 
Protestantism, he claimed that the word '* Catho- 
lic " was out of place in that report. He objected 
to the word Catholic when it applied to the Roman 
Church. He was raised in the midst of Catholics, 
and the first church he ever attended in his life was 
a Catholic Church. Pie w^as pleased with the 
lights, music, and all such as that, but when it 
came to ^^Hail Mary, full of grace and truth, 
Lamb of God," etc., he w^ondered v/hat it meant. 
He looked upon it as the grandest scheme of fool- 
ishness that was ever imposed upon man. The 
Roman people were the greatest curse that be- 
longed to any ecclesiastical relations in the world. 
Pie hoped that the angel that would come from 
heaven with a chain to bind the devil for one thou- 
sand years, would also bind Pope Pius IX., or any 
other Pope that might be in existence then, hand 
and foot. They should be very faithful to the men 
who sacrificed their lives for the purpose of getting 
rid of the abominations and whoredom of these 
Roman Catholics. Protestantism had a distinguish- 
ing feature — it had suffered the loss of blood and 
liberty in many instances. 

Rev. J. C. Momyer did not think that Protestants 
regarded the priests as proper persons to administer 
Christian baptism, He could not look upon it in 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 69 

any other light. They had as much right to receive 
the baptism administered by a lay member of the 
church as they had to receive the baptism of a 
priest. They, as a Church, were not ready to 
sanction what the priests did, because their method 
of baptism, the ceremony and all connected with 
it, was not in accordance with the Christian system, 
and consequently he did not think they could re- 
gard the baptism of an individual baptized by a 
Roman Catholic priest as vahd. The Church of 
Rome was working at the very vital interests of the 
Church of God, and were trying to destroy that 
which they were trying to build up. 

Rev. J. A. Bowen thought that the report of the 
committee was not consistent in all of its parts. 
He did not know whether they ought to reject the 
Roman Catholic Church all together or not; but if 
the first part of the report was correct, then it 
seemed to him that the latter part was wrong. 

Dr. Mitchell offered an amendment. 

Rev. Mr. Ashmore advocated the amendment, 
and Rev. Mr. Chase opposed it. The latter said 
he would like for the world to know how he held 
this Roman hierarchy, but he would forbear from 
making a speech. 

Rev. Mr. Lack said that from the remarks made 
it seemed to leave the impression on the minds of 
those who did not know him that he was in favor 
of Roman Catholicism, but such was not the case. 

Rev. J. T, A, Henderson believed it was the 



lyo THE tri-lemma; or, 

sentiments of the General Assembly that the Ro- 
man Catholic Church was an apostate church, not 
a true church, and ought not to be regarded as 
such by the Assembly, hence he thought that the 
jDortion of the report proposed to be stricken out 
should be retained. 

Rev. Mr. Kirkland considered the report a sim- 
ple embodiment of fact. If the Roman Catholics 
had the spirit of Christ they would let our Bible 
go among them and let our civil institutions alone. 
He was not afraid or ashamed to tell them the 
truth. 

Rev. W. S. Campbell, D. D., made a brief 
speech in favor of the report of the committee 
and in opposition to the amendment proposed by 
Dr. Mitchell. He thought that the answer given 
to the interrogatory propounded by the lower judi- 
catory by the committee was a proper one. How 
could they answer it any other way? It was not 
simply priests who could administer baptism, but 
bishops, priests and deacons, and in cases of neces- 
sity men and w^omen could administer the ordi- 
nance. 

Dr. Campbell then read at some length from 
the section from which were taken the specifica- 
tions given in the report. AVere they prepared to 
say that baptism, administered with these cere- 
monies, was Christian baptism ? If this amendment 
should be adopted, it would be saying that what 
the committee had reported was not a correct con- 



I 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 171 

elusion, and that this abominable perversion of the 
rite of baptism was to be regarded as Christian 
baptism. They should stand sacredly by the insti- 
tutions of the Church, as laid down by the Word 
of God, and whilst they were guarding against rit- 
ualism, or an undue estimate placed upon any of 
the rights of the Church, they should, on the other 
hand, guard against indifferentism. 

Pending the discussion of the subject, the Assem- 
bly adjourned until 2:30 o'clock p. m., to meet in 
the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. 

[AfLernoon, 2:30.] 

The business pending at recess in the forenoon, 
which was the report No. 3 of the Committee on 
Overtures, was taken up. 

Rev. G. W. Mitchell was not prepared to favor 
the amendment offered by Dr. Mitchell. It seemed 
to him that the General Assembly would subscribe 
with great unanimity to the sentiments expressed in 
the report of the committee, not simply because 
Protestant Christendom had indorsed them almost, 
if not universally, but upon the merits of the case 
itself. If the statements in this section be admitted 
as true, then the conclusion, as set forth by the 
committee, seems inevitable. 

And hence they held the propriety of this section 
of the report being retained, because it was founded 
in truth and fact. By striking out this section of 
the report it appeared as if they were endeavoring 



172 THE tri-lemma; or, 

to evade the direct question before them, which is: 
**Is baptism, as administered by Roman Cathohcs, 
to be regarded as a vaUd Christian baptism?" 
They were in antagonism to Roman CathoHcism, 
and whenever they planted themselves on the great 
principles of Protestantism they should be willing 
to avow that antagonism, and would they now come 
and ask, by the way of apology, to say nothing on 
this subject, and refuse to avow before- God and 
the world their honest views and convictions from 
a scriptural standpoint on this subject? This was 
not the course of Martin Luther when he stood up 
alone against the Roman hierarchy and all its bulls, 
threatening him w^ith destruction. The view of the 
committee was that while Catholic baptism was not 
considered valid, j^erhaps, yet there might be cir- 
cumstances under which the largest liberty should 
be allowed and toleration indulged, in regard to 
cases of this kind. This was a very complex sub- 
ject when they began to examine it in its details 
and ramifications ; therefore, by a simple affirmation 
they could decide all cases of this kind that might 
come before them. That water baptism was not 
necessary to our salvation, and hence it could not 
be regarded as essentially important in comparison 
to those things that were absolutely necessary. He 
would admit that a man would get safely home to 
heaven widiout baptism, provided he had been bap- 
tized by the Holy Spirit, or had received the work of 
regeneration in his heart and by the Holy Ghost. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 73 

If he were in the Church, though without a vaUd 
baptism, and his heart was all right, that would be 
no barrier to his going home to heaven. He^would 
admit that there were good men among the priests 
— men of God, though comparatively few. It was 
not their business to go back and determine 
whether every man that was a priest in the Roman 
Catholic Church was a bad man or not. He held 
that Jesus Christ alone had the authority to make 
ministers. They might, as a Church, authorize 
them in a regular way to exercise the functions of 
their office, but still Jesus Christ alone had the pre- 
rogative to send whom he v/ould to administer in 
holy things. Whilst they bore testimony against 
Rome, they at the same time would not lay burdens 
upon the consciences of those who come to seek a 
home among them in the Church of Jesus Christ. 

Rev. James Vinson moved to re-commit the re- 
port to the committee with certain instructions, and 
advocated his motion at some length. He has been 
a member and visitor of the General Assembly since 
1848, and had never made a speech at any of the 
meetings, and hence he desired the attention of the 
Assembly for a short time. In attenipting to make 
this, the first speech that he had ever attempted to 
make in the General Assembly, he found himself 
surrounded by old and young members of the 
Assembly. Years ago, when two armies were about 
to engage in a fearful conflict, a soldier in one of 
the armies went to his commandinc; officer and said 



174 T}iE tri-lemma; or, 

that the arrows were so thick that they obscured 
the sun. The commander said: "All right, we will 
have the shade to fight in." 

If we adopt this report, even with the amend- 
ment, they would find themselves in the most awk- 
ward attitude that a community of Christians ever 
occupied. If they started to go back on the line 
of Presbyterianism and continued on until they 
reached the beginning point, they would find John 
Galvin. When an infant Calvin was baptized by a 
Roman Catholic priest, and with all the abomina- 
tions and errors of the Romish Church that he ever 
did renounce, he never renounced the baptism 
which he received at the hands of the Roman Catho- 
lic priest when an infant. If they, in tracing the line 
of Presbyterianism, would go back to John Calvin 
and solemnly declare that the baptism by a Roman 
Catholic priest was not Christian baptism, they vir- 
tually declared that there was no Christian baptism 
in our church, and that we were a bogus concern. 
The report drove to the conclusion that the Ro- 
man Catholic Church was not a true church of 
Christ. He would like for some one to tell him 
which was the church of Christ. Suppose that 
they decreed that the P.oman Catholic Church was 
not a true church of Christ, he could not say what 
good would be accomplished by that, because those 
w^ho were well informed upon the subject knew 
that there had been a struggle for hundreds of 
years between the Roman Catholic Church, Greek 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 75 

Church, Protestant Episcopal Church, and in this 
country our Baptist brethren come in the fight as 
to who sliall be regarded as a church of Christ. 
If the Assembly should adopt that report and affirm 
that the Catholic Church was not a true church of 
Christ, they did nothing more than perhaps some 
of the people of Bowling Green were doing in 
saying that the Cumberland Presbyterian Church 
was not a true church of Christ. This did not 
make it £o. Was it a reasonable deduction to 
make from the conclusion that baptism adminis- 
tered by a Roman Catholic priest was, per sc, not 
Christian baptism? This report solemnly affirmed 
that baptism administered by Catholic priests was 
not Christian baptism and was unscriptural, and 
then wound up by telling the brethren to recognize 
it if they wanted to. In one church it will be 
recognized and in another it will not be. The 
tendency of the tiling was to float out from our 
moorings on the deliverances of .the General As- 
sembly. If the baptism of a Roman Catholic priest 
was unscriptural and null and void, the Assembly 
should make the sessions and ministers reject it. 
If he remembered it correctly, he had received 
two Roman Catholics into the church. One of 
them was satisfied with his baptism, the other was 
not, and wanted to be baptized again, which the 
speaker did. He would not attempt to defend the 
Roman Catholic Church or any of its iniquities (if 
it had any). 



176 THE tri-lemma; or, 

The whole of the matter was that if a man came 
to the church, and was satisfied with his baptism, 
the church would take him in, and if he was bap- 
tized by a wicked man, the church would not take 
him in. Suppose a person was baptized by a man 
in whom the Presbytery reposed the high trust of 
a minister of the Gospel, and after that he is found 
out to be a horse-thief or a murderer and is driven 
out of the church, would that fact make the bap- 
tism null and void? He did not believe it. It 
had been remarked by Mr. Mitchell that it was a 
prerogative of Jesus Christ to make men ministers 
of the Gospel. Who had the right to say in the 
General Assembly or anywhere else that Jesus 
Christ never made a minister of the Gospel out of 
a Roman Catholic priest? It seemed to him very 
strange that the General Assembly would decree 
that the baptism administered by a Catholic priest 
was not Christian baptism, and then tell the min- 
isters to accept it as Christian baptism if they 
wanted to. 

Rev. Dr. Beard said he had drawn general con- 
clusions from the statements before the Assembly. 
His first statement w^as this: From the old books 
in church history we learn unquestionably that the 
wrong or corruption, whatever it might be, in the 
administration of the ordinance did not vitiate the 
ordinance. The man that might have'administered 
the ordinance might have been a bad man, the 
ordinance itself was a good thing, and it was valid. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 77 

There was not a single man in this Church that 
would be further from vindicating the errors, cor- 
ruption, persecutions and bloodshed which have 
been kept up from time immemorial on the part 
of the Catholic Church than himself. There were 
young men in the house that had heard him in the 
class-room. They knew where he stood on this 
question and how he looked upon the Roman 
Catholic Church in its threatened encroachments 
upon our civil institutions, and they knew where he 
stood in regard to his estimate of the moral, char- 
acter of that church. But still he held with the 
good old men, that the corruption of the adminis- 
tration did not of a necessity vitiate the ordinance. 
The speaker had wTitten that if God ever called 
him He had called him to preach and not to bap- 
tize. He had been applied to for counsel a num- 
ber of times in regard to the question under dis- 
cussion, and had always taken the ground that the 
sessions of the congregations had the right to con- 
trol the matter. The session held the keys to the 
kingdom, and they did not belong to the Pope or 
the newly-made Cardinal of this country, but to 
the congregations. That was Presbyterianism, not- 
withstanding the high ground their old brethren 
took. The sessions understood the surroundings 
and peculiarities of the case, and they were the 
only persons that could decide, and it was impossi- 
ble for any body else to decide intelligently. It is 
a delicate and difficult matter to attempt to define 



178 THE tri-lemma; or, 

the status of the church. If they said that Roman 
Catholic baptism was invahd they were pledged to 
say that the Roman Catholic Church was not an 
integral part of the great Christian community; that 
it was not a church. It was a perilous matter with 
any community to determine a question of this 
kind. The Roman Catholic Church had said that 
the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was not a 
church, but he did not care one particle for that. 
There were other churches a little nearer them that, 
perhai>s, said the same thing. They had no right 
to setde this question ; it was between themselves 
and their God. He should never become a Roman 
Catholic, and should never become a vindicator of 
Roman Catholicism. He would meet the Roman 
Catholics upon civil or religious questions as long 
as he had toes on his feet, but still he did not wish 
to take the perilous ground of unchurching. He 
was willing for the sessions and pastors of the 
churches to settle these questions. They were the 
proper persons to do it. If there was a denomina- 
tion of people in Christendom that ought to be 
safely conservative on all questions, that denomina- 
tion was the Cumberland Presbyterian. Their 
theology was conservative, their men were con- 
servative, and he hoped their politics were con- 
servative. If there was a communion under 
heaven that ought to be conservative, that ought 
to be taught the value of conservatism from their 
past experiences, it was the Cumberland Presby- 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 79 

terian Church. He regarded this report as an ex- 
treme view of the case, and regarded the amend- 
ment proposed by Dr. Mitchell as being substan- 
tially conservative, and he was in favor of it. He 
was conservative, but, on the other hand, he was 
not a broad churchman; but still he was willing 
to give the world credit for what it was, and, after 
all, Roman Catholics, bad as they were in the past 
times, if they would say nothing about the present, 
they had done a great work. Church history bore 
this testimony, but that did not redeem them of 
their un worthiness now; but still he was willing to 
give honor where honor was due. 

Rev. Mr. Vinson's motion to recommit the report 
to the committee with instructions was lost. 

The report was then adopted. 



Thus by the decision of the C. P. General As- 
sembly Cumberland Presbyterians are to all intents 
and purposes unbaptized, and their ministers, one 
and all, being both tcfibaptized and ordained^ are 
therefore disqualified to administer Christian bap- 
tism. The lay members of this denomination 
should know and be made to realize their anoma- 
lous condition. At best, they have only Catholic 
baptisms; but the Catholics excommunicated their 
fathers, and thus deprived them of all authority to 
administer the ordinances. 

If you who, perchance, may read this are a 
Cumberland Presbyterian, will you answer this: 



i8o THE tri-lemma; or, 

Would you be satisfied with only Catholic baptism? 
Weil, this is all you have. If the Catholic Church 
is the true church of Christ, then the minister 
who baptized you did not give you Catholic bap- 
tism, because being excommunicated he had no 
authority to baptize, and if he should do so the 
act would be invalid. But if the Catholic is an 
apostate and anti-Christian power, then its bap- 
tisms and ordinations never were valid, and you 
are unbaptized. Think of this. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. l8l 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CATHOLICS THEMSELVES IN A TRI-LEMMA. 

The Apostolic Churches Were All Baptist Churches — The 
Catholics in the Fourth and Seventh Centuries Aposta- 
tized, Fell Away, from the Primitive Faith and Order, 
and Thereby Forfeited their Baptisms and Ordinations 
—Unless Baptist are Scriptural Churches the Catholics 
are Unbaptized — If Baptists are True Churches, Then 
Catholics are Heretics, and of course Unbaptized. 

AXIOM I. 

A true Church of Christ is the only organization on 
earth divinely authorized to preach the Gospel or to 
administer Church ordinances. 



(o/t HIS proposition is so self-evident to every 
el j Bible reader, and so universally admitted, 
jT^k^ that I put it down as axiomatic. It fol- 
tTr^ lows, therefore, irresistibly, that no organ- 
ization originated and set up by men, even 
though called Church of Christ, has any right to 
engage in the evangelization of the world, to 
ordain ministers, or administer church ordinances. 
This is the high and holy vocation whereunto 
Christ has called His churches. No other organ- 



i82 THE tri-lemma; or, 

izations can aspire or arrogate to themselves this 
high honor. All can see that it would be nothing 
less than a profanation of divine things for Masonic 
or Odd Fellows' lodges to claim and assume the 
prerogative of ordaining Gospel ministers and ad- 
ministering baptism and the Lord's Supper. Is it 
any the less so for the fifty-three different religious 
societies in America that confess themselves origi- 
nated and set up by men to claim to be churches 
of Christ and administer His ordinances that He 
empowered His churches alone to administer? If 
the proposition be true, it inevitably follows that the 
ordinances administered by these human societies 
are null and void. 

AXIOM II. 

A body, though once a true Church of Christ visible, 
apostatizing from its original and scriptural faith and 
order, and teaching doctrines in manifest contraven- 
tion of them, can not be considered a Church of Christ 
and its ordinances as valid. 

This is so evident and generally conceded that I 
put it down as an axiom, and will add another, 
which naturally follows from it. 

AXIOM III. 

If the majority of a true church should fall away 
from the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, per- 
verting the ordinances to the subversion of men's 
souls, and should exclude the minority that abides by 
the truth, such a majority, though it should retain the 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 183 

name, would not be entitled to the claims of being a 
Church of Christ, and all its acts and ordinances 
would be manifestly null and void. 

AXIOM IV. 

The constitutional minority of any church, however 
small, holding fast the doctrine and order of the Gos- 
pel, though excluded and cast out by an apostate 
majority, must, in accordance with law and reason, be 
considered a true Church and its ordinances valid and 
scriptural. 

Now, Paul expressly predicted that in the latter 
days, before the coming of Christ, there would be 
**a falling away/' an apostasy from the truth and 
order of the Gospel. 

All commentators agree that there was a great 
and almost universal falling away from the faith, 
''once for all delivered to the saints," in the third 
and following centuries. That under the auspices 
of Constantine, those churches, and majorities of 
churches, that had apostatized were organized into 
that corrupt hierarchy known as the Greek Catholic 
Church, and subsequently — A. D. 606-10— the 
Latin or Roman Catholic Church, with its Pontiff* 
appeared in the West. 

Now the churches from whii:h the Catholics ''fell 
away" were those planted upon the one true and 
living foundation by the aposdes, and all history 
records the fact that they were called Ana-hapthts 
— 7?^-baptizers — because they would not recognize 
these apostate anti- Christian Catholic churches as 



184 THE tri-lemma; or, 

churches of Christ, or their immersions as valid. 
They rigidly acted upon the principle that an apos- 
tate and anti-Christian ^^ Church/' so called, could 
not administer valid ordinances. By this attitude 
toward the Catholics they incurred their bitterest 
hatred, and drew do^vn upon themselves their direst 
persecutions. Aided by the secular arm, the Catholics 
drove them out of all the cities and towns and from 
every rural district of the Roman Empire, where their 
forces could reach them, into *^the wilderness, '' 
and forced them to seek shelter and nourishment in 
the mountain caves and valleys of the Crotian Alps 
and Apennines. For ages these secluded mount- 
ain valleys were the sole hiding places of the true 
witnesses of Jesus, and, from this fact, they received 
the names of '^Waldenses,'' *^Voudois" — /. ^., 
*^ Valley Men/' Robinson, the learned historian, 
says : . . 

**From the Latin *vallis' came the English val- 
ley, the French and Spanish *valle,' the Italian 
Waldeci,' the Low Dutch Welleye,' the Provencal 
*vaux,' Waudois,' the Ecclesiastical ^vallences,' 
*valdenses,' ^Waldenses.'" 

To establish historically the force of my axioms, 
I quote a few standard authorities. Dr. Alexis 
Mustin says : 

*'The Voudois [Waldenses] of the Alps are, in 
our view, primitive Christians, or inheritors of the 
primitive church, who have been preserved in these 
valleys from the alterations successively introduced 
by the Church of Rome into evangelical worship. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 185 

It was not they who separated from Catholicism, 
but Catholicism separated from them in modifying 
the primitive worship/' — The Israel of the Alps, p. i. 

Waddington (Episcopalian) in his ' 'History of the 
Church,'''' speaking of the Novatian, whom he called 
** sectaries, '^ because they were expelled from Italy 
because of their protest against the corruptions of 
the Church at Rome in the third century, under 
the pastorate of Cornelius. 

*^And those rigid principles which had charac- 
terized and sanctified the Church in the first cen- 
tury were abandoned to the profession of schisinatic 
sectaries in the thii^d.^^ — p. 70. 

Dr. Alix, a Protestant wTiter, in his *^ History of 
the Churches of Piedmont," says : 

*^For three hundred years or more the Bishop 
of Rome attempted to subjugate the Church of 
Milan under his jurisdiction, and at last the inter- 
est of Rome grew too potent for the Church at 
Milan, planted by 07ie of the apostles, insomuch that 
the bishop [/. e., pastor] and people, rather than 
own their jurisdiction, retired to the valleys of Lu- 
cerne and Angrogna, and thence were called Val- 
dences, Waldenses, or ' the people of the valleys.'" 
— Encyclopedia Religious Knowledge, p. 1148. 

Dr. Cramp, a recent English historian, says : 
'*We may safely infer that the Novatian churches 
were what are now called Baptist churches — adher- 
ing to the apostolic and primitive practice." — p. 59. 

The reader would do well to refer back and 
review what is said of the Baptists, their origin, 
and their history on pp. 128-142. 



i86 THE tri-lemma; or, 

If history establishes any one thing beyond suc- 
cessful contradiction, it is that the apostolic churches 
and the churches universally of the first three cen- 
turies were Baptist churches, and if Christ had a 
kingdom on earth it was composed of these primi- 
tive Baptist churches. 

This, then, is the tri-lemma into which the 
Catholics are historically driven when asked if the 
baptisms of the Baptists are valid. 

If they answer in the affirmative, then they must 
grant that the Baptists were and are true churches 
of Christ, and that the Catholics, having aposta- 
tized and fallen away from their faith and order, 
are schismatics and anti-Christian, and therefore 
widiout baptism or any valid claim to be a Church 
of Christ. 

But if Catholics say that our baptisms and ordi- 
nations are invalid because we are not and were 
never true churches of Christ, then they are com- 
pelled to admit that they themselves have neither 
baptisms nor ordinations, or any just claims to be 
called a Christian Church, since they received all 
their baptisms and ordinations from the Baptists of 
the third and fourth centuries ! ! 

The third horn upon which they are empaled is 
— ^' We can not tell.'* 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 87 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FREEWILL BAPTISTS. 

The Peculiar Doctrines and Characteristics of this Sect. 
— Originated in 1780 by Elder Benj. Randall in the Town 

of Durham, New Hampshire, who, with Several Others, 

Came Out of the Baptist Church. 




^^/HE Freewill Baptists are Baptists only in 
respect to the act and design of baptism, 
which, of course, precludes the practice of 
-^ infant baptism. 

In doctrine they are Arminians, and con- 
sequently believe in the possibility of the final 
apostasy of the regenerated. 

They believe in the possibility of being cleansed 
from all sin in this life — are perfectionists — and are 
'^open'^ in their communion. In fact, in doctrine 
they are immersed Methodists, and in church gov- 
ernment are modified Presbyterians, 

They have but two offices — those of Elder and 
Deacon — and four different ecclesiastical bodies: 
I St. The Church. 2d. The Quarterly Conference. 
3d. The Yearly Meeting. 4th. The General Con- 



i88 THE tri-lemma; or, 

ference — the latter composed of ministers elected 
from the yearly meetings. 

This sect was originated by one Benj. Randall, 
of New Hampshire, who was, at the time, only a 
licensed minister of the Baptist Church. 

Such were his powers of persuasion that, though 
an unlettered man, a number of Baptist ministers 
embraced his sentiments, and were excluded from 
the Baptist Church. These united in ordaining 
Mr. Randall to the ministry, though not ministers 
themselves, and not even so much as members of a 
church! Shortly after his ordination (?) in 1780, 
he organized a society, which he called a church, 
in the town of New Durham, N. H. *^This was 
the first Freewill Baptist Church in America, and 
perhaps the world." — ^^Chu7xhes and Sects ^^"^ p. 141. 
This is the tri-lemma in which this opposing sect 
finds itself. 

Baptist churches are either the true churches of 
Christ or they are not. 

If they are true churches, then Freewill Baptists 
are but sectaries, and without baptism or church 
membership, and their ministers unbaptized and 
without authority to baptize, because apostates, and 
excluded from the church of Christ. 

But if Baptist churches are not scriptural 
churches, then they had no authority, and could 
not, administer valid baptism. Freewill Baptists 
can not be churches in any sense, for they are 
without baptism or a ministry, their first ministers 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 89 

having been baptized by the Baptists, and subse- 
quently all excluded and deprived of the authority 
to baptize. Freewill Baptists can not answer this 
question yea or nay, without destroying themselves 
as churches — viz : 

Are the baptisms of Baptist churches valid ? 



ipo THE tri-lemma; or, 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CAMPBELLITES. 
They Find Themselves in a Tri-lemma — They Are Not 
Agreed Whether They Ought to Baptize Excluded Bap- 
tists Coming to Them or Not — In Some Slates They Do, 
in Others They Do Not— They Can Not Tell Whether 
the Baptisms of Baptists Are Valid or Not and Save Their 
Own. 



HIS modern sect was originated by Alex- 
ander Campbell, in Bethany, Virginia, in 
^ 1827. A short history from unquestioned 
^ sources will be useful to those who have to 
meet the assaults of this pre-eminently bel- 
licose sect : 

*^Mr. Campbell was l^om a Presbyterian in Scot- 
land, and was educated for the ministry in the 
University of Glasgow/' He set sail for America 
in 1809. Landing at New York, he proceeded to 
Pennsylvania, where he commenced his labors in 
this country. Soon after he became a citizen of 
West Virginia, and while still a Pedobaptist he 
gathered a small society at Bush Run. During 
this period he made an unsuccessful attempt 
at reformation upon the following principle : 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. I9I 

** Faith in Jesus as the true Messiah, and obedi- 
ence to Him as our Lawgiver and King, the 
only test of Christian character, and the only 
bond of Christian union, communion and co-oper- 
ation, irrespective of all creeds, opinions, com- 
mandments, and traditions of men." — Chy. Res., 
p. 9. Of this attempt Mr. Campbell says: ^'On 
this bottom we put to sea, with scarcely hands 
enough to man the ship. We had head winds and 
rough seas," etc. — Chy. Res., p. lo. 

After his failure in this attempt at reformation, 
he decided to unite with the Baptists; not because 
he was one in principle^ but because he regarded 
them as *' being favorable to his views of reform." 
Accordingly, in 1812, he was immersed by Elder 
Luce, a Baptist minister, without the action or au- 
thority of any Baptist Church, and contrary to 
invariable and recognized law and usage of Baptist 
churches. I will quote from the Memoirs of Mr. 
Campbell, written by his son-in-law, Mr. Richardson : 

** Wednesday, the 12th day of June, 181 2, hav- 
ing been selected, Elder Luce, in company with 
Elder Henry Spears, called at Thos. Campbell's on 
their way to the place chosen for the immersion, 
which was the deep pool in Buffalo Creek, where 
three members of the Association had formerly been 
baptized. .Next morning, as they were setting out, 
Thos. Campbell simply remarked that Mrs. Camp- 
bell had ])ut up a change of raiment for Jiei'self and 
hini^ which was the first intimation given that they 



192 THE tri-lemma; or, 

also intended to be immersed.'' * * Alexander 
had stipulated with Elder Luce that the ceremony 
should be performed precisely according to the pat- 
tern given in the New Testament, and that tliere 
was no account of any of the first converts being 
called to give what is called a ^religious experi- 
ence.' This modern custom should be omitted, 
and that the candidates should be admitted on the 
simple confession that ^ Jesus is the Son of God.' 
Elder Luce had, indeed, at first objected to these 
changes, as being contrary to Baptist usages, but 
finally consented, remarking that he believed they 
were right, and he would run the risk of censure. 
There were not, therefore, upon this occasion, any 
of the usual forms of receiving persons into the 
church upon a detailed account of religious feel- 
ings and impressions. There was, indeed, no 
Baptist Church-meeting to which any such 

' experience ' COULD HAVE BEEN RELATED, EldcrS 

Luce and Spears, with Elder D. Jones, of Eastern 
Pennsylvania, being the only Baptists known to 
have been present." — pp. 396-398. 

Mr. Campbell and his father continued members 
of the Bush Run Society, which he had organized 
previous to his immersion by Mr. Luce, until the 
next year, when it, with all the Campbells, upon 
the presentation of a satisfactory creed or confes- 
sion, were received as a Baptist Church into tlie 
Red Stone Baptist Association. Not until 1823 did 
Mr. Campbell commence putting forth his peculiar 



DEATH 15Y THREE HORNS. 1 93 

views of baptism in order to the remission of sins, 
and his new system of Christianity, and in 1827 
the Baptists expelled him and all who embraced his 
unscriptural views. 

Campbellites of this day deny this, claiming that 
they withdrew from the Baptists, but Mr. Campbell 
declares that he, with all the brethren of the 
reformation, were excluded^ not of their choice, but 
by constraint. *'They [the Baptists] declared non- 
fellowship with the brethren of the reformation, 
thus BY CONSTRAINT, NOT OF CHOICE, they Were 
obliged to form societies out of those communities 
that split upon the ground of adherence to the 
apostohc doctrine." This is Mr. Campbell's own 
testimony. It was out of those who, like himself, 
were excluded for heresy, that Mr. Campbell orig- 
inated his scheme he calls a church. 

Now, then, several things in connection with the 
rise of Campbellism that deserves especial notice: 

THE WHOLE SECT IS MANIFESTLY AND CONFESSEDLY 
WITHOUT CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 

1. According to all the principles that character- 
ize Baptists, neither Alexander Campbell nor his 
father was scripturally baptized. 

2. Mr. Luce had no authority from Christ or a 
Christian Church to baptize Mr. Campbell as he 
did, and therefore the act was null and void. 

The Church that ordained Mr. Luce, nor the 
Church he served as pastor, gave him a shadow of 



194 THE tri-lemma; or, 

authority to go forth and baptize whomsoever he 
deemed qualified, even after hearing from them an 
exi)erience of grace. The credentials — commission 
— that a Baptist minister receives from a church is 
to preach the Gospel and to administer the ordi- 
nances — /. €., when called upon by a Church to 
do so. This is understood, because all Baptist 
churches hold that the ordinances are church ordi- 
nances, in and under the control of each church. 
If it is claimed that he may administer one ordi- 
nance, as baptism, to whom and where he sees fit, 
then he is equally empowered to administer the 
Lord's Supper when and to whom he pleases, for 
a principle can not be divided. Mr. Luce had no 
authority to baptize Mr. Campbell, and therefore 
the immersion he performed in Buffalo Creek was 
not Christian baptism. 

3. But suppose I grant what some claim, that 
Mr. Luce, being an ordained Baptist minister, 
was thereby authorized to baptize. It must be ad- 
mitted that the Church granted this upon the express 
or implied understanding that her minister should 
require the same evidence of regeneration of heart 
that she herself required; not less, and certainly 
upon no evidence whatever. But Mr. Campbell 
refused to give any evidence of sins remitted or re- 
generation of heart, for he had no such evidence 
to give. He did not profess to be in the enjoyment 
of pardon, nor did he profess that he had any evi- 
dence of regeneration of heart previous to his im- 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 95 

mersion. Therefore his immersion by Mr. Luce 
was no Christian baptism, even if I grant that Mr. 
Luce had scriptural authority to baptize him, for 
Mr. Campbell was not a qualified subject. Had he 
even gone before a Baptist Church, and by it been 
received and immersed, the act would not have been 
scriptural baptism, unless it had been upon and into 
a profession of conscious regeneration — a heart 
** sprinkled from an evil conscience.'' But, upon 
his own theory, 

MR. CAMPBELL NEVER WAS BAPTIZED. 

He says : 

*^ Remission of sins can not be enjoyed by any 
person before immersion. Belief of this testimony 
is what impelled us into the water, knowing that the 
efficacy of His blood is to be communicated to our 
consciences in the way wjiich God has pleased to 
appoint. We^ stagger not at the promise, but flee 
to the sacred ordinance [water of baptism] which 
brought the blood of Jesus in contact with our con- 
sciences. Without knowing and believing this, 

IMMERSION IS A BLASTED NUT — THE SHELL IS THERE, 

BUT THE KERNEL IS WANTING." — Christian Baptism, 

p. 521. 

Mr. Campbell's baptism, then, according to his 
own theory, was a blasted nut, for — ist. Mr. Luce 
never immersed him for any such purpose. No 
Baptist Church or Baptist minister ever baptized to 
bring the blood of Christ in contact with the con- 
science of his subject, or to procure for him the 



196 THE tri-lemma; or, 

remission of sins or regeneration of his heart. Mr. 
Campbell himself, at this time, 181 2, did not know 
or believe any such doctrine. He had never 
thought of it in his wildest imaginations. It was 
years after his baptism before his preaching or 
writings were tainted by these heretical concep- 
tions. Therefore Mr. Campbell, himself being his 
own judge, was never scripturally baptized, nor 
were any of his first ministers or followers, and 
consequently since a pure stream can not flow from 
an impure fountain, the Campellites of this age are 
all unbaptized and without authority to baptize. 
But Campbellites, as well as Protestants, are im- 
paled upon the middle horn of a tri-lemma — they 
can not tell whether the baptisms of Baptists are 
from heaven or of men. For — 

Baptist churches are the true churches of Christ 
or they are false ones. 

For if they are true churches, Campbellite soci- 
eties evidently are not, but schismatics, that have 
been excluded from these true churches, and conse- 
quently are without authority to preach or to baptize. 

If Baptist churches are false^ as Mr. Campbell 
declares, and multitudes of his societies that im- 
merse Baptists who come to them, then Mr. Camp- 
bell was both unbaptized and unordained, as are all 
his ministers to-day, and without the shadow of au- 
thority to baptize; and therefore the whole denomi- 
nation, being unbaptized, are no church of Christ 
in any sensCo 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 197 

A false church can not administer valid baptisms 
or ordinations, and Mr. Campbell and his ministers 
received theirs from the Baptists, whose churches 
and baptisms they deny to be scriptural ! Will not 
Campbellites ask themselves this question, when 
they re-immerse our excluded members, 

Who baptized Mr. Campbell? 



198 THE TRI-LEMMA; OR, 



CHAPTER VI. 

ANTI-MISSIONARY BAPTISTS. 

They Are Not Primitive but Derivative Baptists — Historical 
Proof by Dr. T. H. Pritchard, N. C— If the Baptisms 
of Missionary Ba})lists Are Not Valid, Then the Anti- 
Missionaries Are All Unbaptizecl and No Churches — A 
Tri-lemma for the Hard Shells. 



HAT the Anti-missionary Baptists are not 
Regular or Primitive Baptists, but an un- 
scriptural sect and apostate from the faith 
and practice of the Apostolic Baptists, has 
^ been repeatedly shown from accredited his- 
tory and even from their own. The fact is, they 
are Derivatives and not Primitives. They ^*fell 
away" from the Regular Baptists in 1827-32, about 
the time the Campbell ites did, and are no more 
Baptists than the Campbellites are. They went 
out from us, because not of us; and when they had 
■ the majority in the churches they drove out the Regu- 
lar Baptists from the church houses they had built. 
In the following historical sketch^^ from the pen of 
Dr. T. H. Pritchard, President of Wake Forest 




'•' Copied from Biblical Recorder. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 1 99 

College, North Carolina, we find a brief and 
conclusive demonstration of the whole matter at 
issue : 

NOT PRIMITIVE OR OLD SCHOOL, BUT NEW SCHOOL, 
OR ANTI-MISSIONARY BAPTISTS. 

'' I propose to show that the terms Old School and 
Primitive^ when applied to that class of Baptists who 
oppose Foreign Missions, Sunday-schools, revivals 
of religion, Bible societies, etc., are misno^ners, and 
that the real Primitive or Old School Baptists are 
the Missionary Baptists of this day. This is a ques- 
tion oi fact, not of opinion, and I shall submit testi- 
mony drawn from their own records establishing the 
position. The evidence adduced is taken from the 
** History of the Sandy Creek Association," written 
by Dr. Geo, W. Purefoy, and I shall sometimes use 
his language and sometimes my own, quoting the 
names of authors, with chapter and verse, that there 
may be no question as to the authenticity of the 
testimony presented. Taking it for granted that 
the Christians of the apostolic age were Baptists, 
which I assuredly believe, two things are clear: 
First, that God called and directed men to preach 
to the heathen (Acts xiii : 2; Gal. i: 15); and, 
second, that funds were raised by the churches and 
paid as ** wages'' to the missionaries (2 Cor. xi : 
7, 8, 9). The original and Primitive Baptists were, 
therefore, Missionary Baptists, like those of the 
present day, who sent men called of God to preach 



20O THE tri-lemma; or, 

the Gospel to the heathen and collect funds 
which are paid as . the wages of the mission- 
aries. 

I shall now prove from unquestionable historical 
facts that the Associations which are now anti-mis- 
sionary were in favor of foreign missions up to the 
years 1826-27-30, and hence have no claim to the 
title of the Old School Baptists. 

I will begin with the Baltimore Association, per- 
haps the most famous body of this modern sect in 
the United States. Their minutes for 1814 contain 
the following record: *' Received a corresponding 
letter from Bro. Rice, one of ow missionary breth- 
ren, on the subject of encouraging missionary soci- 
eties.'' This Bro. Rice was Luther Rice, who was 
then just from Burmah, whither he had gone as a 
missionary with Adoniran Judson. 

In 1 81 6, these minutes, in their circular letter, 
say: ^'The many revivals of religion which are 
witnessed in various parts of the country — the mul- 
tiplication of Bible societies, Missionary societies, 
and Sunday-schools, both in our own and foreign 
countries — are viewed by us as showing indications 
of the near approach of that day when the knowl- 
edge of the Lord shall cover the earth.'' 

The minutes of the same year state that *^the 
Standing Clerk was instructed to supply the Cor- 
responding Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board 
>vith a copy of our minutes annually.'' 

Jn 1817, **Bro, Luther Rice presented himself 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 20I 

as the messenger of the Baptists Board for Foreign 
Missions, and was cordially received/' 

Elder James Osborne was a member of this body 
which cordially received a Foreign Missionary, 
and at this very session was appointed a Home 
Missionary. This man Osborne, who was a leader 
in the Anti-mission secession, both in Maryland and 
North Carolina, I remember to have seen in Char- 
lotte when I was a small boy. He was a hand- 
some, dressy man, full of conceit, and very fond 
of talking of himself and of selling his own books. 

From the same authentic source, the manutes of 
the Baltimore Association, we learn that in 1828 
they called themselves ** Regular Baptists,'' just as 
we do now. The same year they express their joy 
at the intelligence of the conversion of the heathen, 
and as late as 1827 the association expressed by 
formal resolutions their sorrow at the death of Mrs. 
Ann H. Judson, and their great interest in the mis- 
sion with which she was connected, and it was not 
till 1836, w^hen the association met with the Black 
Rock Church, and then by a vote of sixteen to nine^ 
that fellowship was withdrawn from churches favor- 
ing foreign missions, Sunday-schools, etc. 

To come back now to North CaroHna, I can 
prove that the Kehukee and Country Line Associa- 
tions, two of the most influential of the Anti-mission 
party, were once missionary bodies. In Burkett & 
Read's History of the Kehukee Association it is 
stated on page 139 that in 1794, a special day was 



202 THE trt-lemma; or, 

appointed to pray God for a revival of religion^ and 
on page 145, that it was the custom of ministers of 
that date to invite penitents to come forward and 
kneel down to be prayed for, just as we do in our 
revival meetings now. 

In Bigg's History, Kehukce Association, page 
162, it appears that this Association appointed dele- 
gates to meet at Cashie Church, Bertie county, in 
June, 1805, with delegates from the Virginia, Ports- 
mouth, and Neuse Association, and at this meeting 
arrangements v/ere made to collect money for 
missionary purposes. Thus it appears that the 
Kehukee w^as not only in fellowship with the Ports- 
mouth and other missionary Baptist Associations, 
but that the very first missionary society ever 
organized in the State w^as in that bounds of this 
body. 

In 1812, this association sent $3; in 1813, $5; 
and in 1814, $5, to the general meeting of corre- 
spondence of North Carolina, w^hich w^as an organ- 
ization of the Missionary Baptists. 

The same history of the Association show^s that 
in 181 7 it was in correspondence with the General 
Convention of the Baptists, which met that year in 
Philadelphia, and which was supporting Judson and 
other foreign missionaries, and it was not till 1-827 
that this Association took a decided anti-missionary 
ground. 

The evidence to show that the Country Line 
Association was a missionary body up to the year 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 203 

1832 is perfectly overwiielming. Its minutes show 
that in 1 81 6, '17 and '18, that body sent delegates to 
the general meeting of correspondence, and in 1816 
Elder Geo. Roberts, one of the ministers of this 
Association, was the Moderator of the general meet- 
ing of correspondence of which Robert T. Daniel 
was the agent, and which developed into the North 
Carolina Baptist State Convention. In 1 8 1 8 this asso- 
ciation sent $32.45 to the North Carolina Mission- 
ary Society by the hands of Bro. John Campbell. 

And what is still more remarkable, there was a 
very prosperous Woman's Mission Society "in this 
Association, the minutes of which, kept by John 
Campbell, show that the ^^Hyco Female Cent So- 
ciety " was formed at Tynch's Creek meeting- 
house, in Caswell county, in October, 1816; in 
March, 1817, it met at Bush Arbor meeting-house; 
in March, 1818, it met at the same place; in 1819 
at Grave's meeting-house, and the fifth annual 
meeting was held in September, 1820, at Arbor. 
All of these churches are now anti-missior., but 
were then missionary bodies, and the persons who 
preached the annual sermons — R. Dishong, J. 
Landus, Barzillar Graves, Abner W. Clopton, and S. 
Chandler — were all Missionary Baptist ministers.- 

In 1832, the Country Line Association was in 
regular correspondence with the Flat River and 
Sandy Creek Associations, both of which were 
then and still are missionary bodies. 

In 1832 James Osborne, of Baltimore, visited this 



204 THE TRI-LEMMA; OR; 

Association, and under his influence it was induced 
to withdraw fellowship from the Missionary Baptists 
of the State. 

Now from this brief statement of unvarnished 
facts we see that the Missionary Baptists are just 
where the apostles were and where all of the name 
were till 1827-28, when a nnu sect arose ^ calling 
themselves, according to Elder Bennett's Review, 
page 8, at first the Refo7ined Baptists in North Caro- 
lina, and then the Old Baptists, the Old So7't of 
Baptists, Baptists of the Old Stamp, and finally 
adopted the name of the Primitive Baptists. 

There are many things about these brethren 
which I like, and I would not needlessly call them 
by an offensive name, but I can not style them 
either Old School or Primitive Baptists, for in so 
doing I should falsify the facts of history and 
acknowledge that I and my brethren have departed 
from the faith of the apostles and Baptist fathers. 
In no invidious sense, therefore, but from neces- 
sity, I am obliged to call them New School or Ayiti- 
niissio7iary Baptists.'''^ 

The short statement of the whole matter is this: 

1. The Regular Baptists of Europe were Mis- 
sionary Baptists. 

2. The first Baptists of England were Missionary 
Baptists. 

3. The first association ever formed in England 
was a Missionary Baptist Association. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 205 

4. The first Baptist Church in America, at New- 
port, R. I., was a Missionary Baptist Church. 

5. The first Baptist Association ever organized in 
America, the Philadelphia, which included all 
known Baptist churches, was a Missionary Baptist 
Association, and annually raised money for min- 
isterial education and missionary operations. That 
Association has ever been a missionary body. 

6. The first Association that was organized in 
New England, the Warren Association, which em- 
braced all the Baptist churches in New England, 
was a. missionary body, and is to this day. 

7. The fixrst Baptist Association ever formed in 
Virginia was a Missionary Baptist Association. 

8. The first Associations organized in North Caro- 
lina, in South Carolina, in Georgia, in Tennessee, 
and in every Southern State, were Missionary Bap- 
tist Associations. 

9. All the fathers, founders, and originators of 
this new sect, who claim the name of Primitive Bap- 
tists, once belonged to Missionary Baptist churches, 
and co-operated in the missionary work, and some 
of them, like James Osborne, die originator of 
anti-missionism in Maryland and North Carolina, 
were actually missionaries of the boards. Now 
this is the unenviable position in which the * ^Anti- 
missionaries " have placed themselves. So far as 
I can learn, they deny that Missionary Baptist 
churches are churches of Christ, or that they can, or 
ever could, administer Gospel ordinances. Whence, 



2o6 THE tri-lemma; or, 

then, did the Anti-missionaries get their baptisms 
and ordinations ? 



HERE IS THE TRI-LEMMA FOR THE HARD 
SHELLS. 

Missionary Baptist churches are either true churches 
of Christ or they are not. If true churches, then those 
who apostatized from them are sectaries and no 
churches, and have no right to administer the ordi- 
nances. But if false churches, they were always so, 
and therefore they never could, or did, administer 
scriptural ordinances, and all those immersed or or- 
dained by them are to-day unbaptized and unordained; 
in which case the Anti-missionaries are themselves 
unbaptized and no churches of Christ. The fact is, 
the Anti-missionaries are not Baptists, neither are 
they churches of Christ. Their faith is not the faith 
of the Gospel — the faith once delivered to the saints. 
Their preaching is another gospel than Paul preached, 
and we are commanded to condemn it and withdraw 
altogether from those who preach it, and hold another 
gospel than that he preached. They, by organic law, 
deny and refuse to execute the mission for which 
Christ organized His churches, and exclude and per- 
secute those who do, and thereby they forfeit all claims 
to be regarded or treated as scriptural churches. If 
not churches of Christ, their ordinances are null and 
void, and ought not to be accredited by us. If they 
are indeed scriptural churches, then Missionary Bap- 
tist churches evidently are not. Missionary Baptists 
have no more bitter and malignant enemies than the 
Anti-missionaries. They deny our churches to be 
scriptural. They deny the faith we hold and teach. 
They deny our ordinances to be scriptural or valid. 



DEATH BY THREE HORNS. 207 

They openly and constantly proclaim all our efforts to 
build up and extend the kingdom of Christ, our Sun- 
day-schools, our missionary efforts, our Bible Socie- 
ties, our efforts to educate young ministers, our efforts 
to circulate pure versions of the Bible at home and in 
heathen lands, and our boards through v/hich we send 
and support missionaries to preach the everlasting 
Gospel of the blessed God, even our Saviour, as the 
very work of the devil, and promptly exclude from their 
fellowship those of their members who feel it their 
duty to assist in these efforts to evangelize the world. 

There are doubtless many true Christians in this 
sect, as there are in all others, but if all were Chris- 
tians they could not be accredited as scriptural 
churches so long as they hold, preach, and practice as 
they do, and exhaust their whole strength in opposing 
and attempting to destroy the churches of Christ. If 
this chapter should meet the eyes of thoughtful, hon- 
est Christians among the Anti-missionaries, Vv^ill they 
not ask themselves this question ? 

Who baptized all those ministers and members 
who constituted the first Anti-missionary Baptist 
churches ? 

Then answer this question : 

If the baptisms of Missionary Baptists are not valid 
to-day, were they valid then ? 



227 ^eccno ^TReec, meiupbit^, lenn. 
VAI^XJABI-E &WLATj,J^ BOOKS. 

OI«l T^:ii!iditinr1e§!>iflii. Wlint is it? 2(>2 pp., J. R. Graves, ^ 75 

*'T5»e 3.aii5«' BajKisi," l)v J. M. Martin, . . . . i OO 

TBic AsMvsiolac €3b«i'cIi, by W. E. Pitxtoii, . . . 125 

TBir<M» Il<»a<*OJis ftri* }>eiBij^ si Baptist, Pendleton, . <>0 

C^lMircli .THaiaaial, i.v .). M. I'tMidU'ioii 50 

]l5as»ta!*i C8»nri'Bi I>lr<'<»toB\r, by K.T. Hiscox, . . !>0 
TrEl<>i)iiiiia; nv all IfiiiiBan ClBiiB'cItes >vitlBOiit 

iSsii»li>4£lB, ViMV JCdilioii, vMratly eiilar.^fd, ... fiO 

C>J»f«»<''f B«SB!s* <<» HapJist.H AjESw«»E'e<l. l>y INTniy Welch, 60 

Ha's»(3.<«S Fac'g.«« a^asBBKit Metkodi.'tit Fi4*tioBB, . :{<> 

TIae i|itoMfii(>iB of tBB«r A;;-i», l)v.I. s. D-ak.r, D.D., . 15 

Bapliiits Bi«»t Pi*ote>*taii(8. TIbc Two Witiiei^ses, . 15 

imSkTOEtK AL.. 

OB'Oltard's dBB'OBBoloffiWBl tiistOB'y, 2 vol.'?., . . S 00 
Bapti.^t ^'SauB'eBB ?$(BC<'es.sBOiB, D. B. Kav, . . .2 00 
TlBe«iB«siiB r.i-BBt'st, A. C. Jjayton, 2 vols. Each, . . 1 ."rO 
CrafifiBp*** isfiistOB^y, 2 25 



TBbc IBaplL'^lf'i. T'G. Jones 

Oi-igi^i aani £iistoi\r ofBapti^^ts. by S. IT. Ford, LL.D. 

rOl.KJIIC'AL.. 
Tlio Grares-RltzleB' I>eS*afe. 1-1 days, ns-l pp., 
T!n» Kav-l^Bieas i>eB>ate «bb <';iiB5pI»c'l£isBBB 
T8«e I^bUI*^ Ib-obb WfiBeel, by J. l{. (iiavcs, 
€'aiBBS>ll»eiilsaBB C^xparsoci, by A. P. Williams, D.D., 
S£«*y to I'a BIB pRm'Ubsbbb. Valnable. I). ]>. Ray, 
I>eeds of l>:irliBBes«!> <liscl«se<l. J. G. White, . 

I>OCTKiNAI. AM1> i:XEGETICAl>. 

A. Fa»IBoj»'s ^Vorlis. .3 Vols 

C'BBi'BMtiaia I><»etB*i!B<'.s by J, M. Pendleton, D.D., 
CflBB'iiiitiaEB Paa'adoxe.s. N. INI. Crawford, D.D., 
Tlie Mi<fid!le l^ife; Oar .state between Death and the Res- 
urection, by J. Pi. Gi-aves, 

IBYxlIN BOttK.S. 

Tli^ "New Baptist. II.tbbbbb 1S4»oBc, witli mnsic. 
Tlae Nfu- 3fia8>lK«*j II.vibbbb Bo<»l€, without mnsic, 
TSte ILtttBe .SeB'apli >^a.bbatflB-K%c*BBOoi Boole, (^Seven 

shaped notes,) 

NKW TRACTS. 

The Actof ]Bapti.4iiB, by J. R. Graves, <. . . . 
'V'ae M.rBt&l»olBSBBi (ftt'Bapti.saBB, I'V J. R. Graves, 
Tlae aieBatioBB ot'BsiptissBB ti> .Salvation, .T. R. Graves, 
T3ie liOr<8N .Saappea^sB <'BiBCi*eBB 4>fl'<iSBa9aBB4«e, 
Eatiia;^ aiB<l I>i*ifiBBfciiig- llcinor ilail.T. W bat i.s it ? J. R. 

(iravcs, 

PlodeB'BB ftBiivei^iali.SBBB, stated and I'xposod. J.R.Graves, 

Feet WissBaiii;-. by W. .\. Jarr.'il, 

IVli.s.sioiaai\v BSaptists tBae PB-iaaaitit'e Baptists, 
I'B'iBbeiple. ils 4'<»BBlii4*ts unit eBBBBqaaests, by Prcd. A.T. 



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no 

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150 

9 00 
1 50 

150 



100 

85 



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10 
10 
lO 
10 

10 

lO 
10 
10 

10 
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Feet WasBaiBBg:, its Symbolism, by C. R. Hendrickson, D.D, 
The.s<' will he sent promptly jiost-paid, on receipt of j»riee. 

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